


Cor Autem Aurora

by HakureiRyuu, Isis_the_Sphinx



Category: Final Fantasy XV, Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Good Kairi Content FIGHT ME NOMURA, KH3 inclusion eventually, Multi, Pitioss Ruins Theory, Post-DDD, You'll never guess whose name Izunia was., going to hell in a different handbasket, pre-KH3
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2019-07-28 05:37:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 56,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16235258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HakureiRyuu/pseuds/HakureiRyuu, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis_the_Sphinx/pseuds/Isis_the_Sphinx
Summary: In one dream, it is the darkest night before the dawn. In another, the sun has yet to set. Dawn calls for aid, lying behind her broken heart. Night or day, it’s all the same sky.Or, when an unfamiliar dream-eater asks for a favor, Sora can hardly say no.(KH/FFXV crossover based largely in Eos. Expect fluff and angst in equal measures, low-key established relationships, lots of speculation on the mechanics of magic, and too many fan-theories to count. This is not your parents’ fix-it fic.)





	1. Prologue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How long were you in the dark?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some phrasing borrowed from [A Sailorman's Hymn](https://archiveofourown.org/works/240010/chapters/368909), by VastDerp.

He waits in stillness.

Not true stillness, of course. Shadows and monsters, dread sickness and purging fire all ripple under his skin, but he waits. Because once, a very long time ago, he wanted what was best for his world, when he gave everything to cleanse the Star of its blight.

Now he _is_ the blight. And so he waits.

The gods have commanded him to wait for the next chosen one to end his existence, end the _scourge’s_ existence at last, and so here

he

_stays._

-

The corridor outside his cell brightens and darkens with regularity, though the light itself never touches him. For a time, he had counted the days as they passed, carved small tally marks with a curved blade he still kept, for all that he had woken here with its steel still plunged into his back.

He doesn’t carve tallies anymore. Every inch of wall and floor is so densely covered in marks and lines as to be incomprehensible. The repetitious pattern is soothing and maddening at the same time - the endless days, years, _centuries_ may pass in a blur, but he is ever reminded of their endlessness.

(His own folly, of course. Trying to ease burdens only makes them more difficult to bear. He understands that now.)

He has no need to eat. He cannot sleep. The passage of time ceases to have any meaning.

So he talks to himself.

There are so many of him to talk to now, there in the writhing dark just barely contained by paper-thin skin. He is the blight of darkness, the scourge of the Star, and all its many manifestations cling to him with strands of spider-silk. Every daemon he absorbed, every monster that bubbles forth anew, has a will of its own.

His will is stronger. Always was, always _must_ be.

But, on some days, he has to admit - some of them have rather _interesting_ points of view.

-

He almost doesn’t notice the first time an oblong shadow passes through the dimness of the corridor. Footsteps on stone sound outside, there and gone so quickly that they may well be an echo of his own. He cocks his head to listen, curious despite himself. The footsteps come closer, and the shadow in the hall lengthens.

And then someone is there. A boy, quite young, clad in blacks and dark greys that blend together in the dimness.

“Somnus?” he says. It is the first he has spoken in rather a while, and comes out raspy and thin.

The boy does not answer, but he does step slightly closer. The light shifts, and a face appears to match the body - sharp features, silver hair, a determined set to his jaw typical of boys his age, and pale amber eyes so very like his own. Little wonder he had mistaken the child for his own ~~_traitorous_~~  brother, however briefly.

“What is this place?” the boy demands.

“What a peculiar creature you are,” he thinks. Or perhaps says. A voice so like dear Somnus, yet the face of a stranger, and the faintest dusting of scourge on his skin. “Where did you come from, little one?”

The boys eyes flicker upward, just for a moment, and he laughs. A young man sent from the Stars themselves, of all things! Yet this is no child of the prophecy, not the _Chosen King_ for whom he is to meekly wait for salvation. This boy is only passing through - an impatient traveler, ready to turn ship.

“You’re of no consequence at all, are you?” he says.

A myriad of emotions pass across the boy’s face, anger the pivot on which all of them turn. The boy scowls and kicks the bars of his prison in a fit of pique, and then leaves when his only response is to laugh yet more.

This cage is nothing to him. The boy’s prison is more damning by far.

-

An immeasurable amount of time later, the boy visits again.

“There’s no one else here,” the boy says, scowling.

“Angelgard is holy ground,” he says without looking, only waving an idle hand from where he now lays. “Only the gods of this world decide who comes and goes.”

The boy appears to consider this. “Is Angelgard the name of this world?” he asks.

He scoffs. For him, it might as well be. “The name of this world is meaningless,” he says softly, almost to himself, “for its namesake is long slain.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

 _It means that Eos is a world of godslayers_ , he says, or perhaps thinks. _And the children of the gods do avenge their parents in such interesting ways._

The boy is still talking. He is not listening anymore.

He thinks that he is probably one of those ways.

-

He cannot see the blood moon shining above, but he _feels_ it. Countless daemons sing into his mind and he welcomes them in. The oily blackness of the starscourge ripples in his veins, darkness pours from his eyes and mouth, and he shrieks his wordless longing to a sky he has not seen in eons.

He has no need to see the sky. In his mind, it is already choked in miasma, dim and starless and pure.

A dusky, twisted glow alights outside his door. He lunges, snarling, between the bars, and something blindingly bright fills the room and _forces_ him away, lifting and _throwing_ him against the far side with enough force that he -

\- dies.

His body dies, but his mind goes nowhere, and what’s left of his heart simply waits.

There is nowhere for one such as him to go.

Eventually he gets up again, as he always does. When he looks around, it is only the boy he sees, though his vision is blurry still. His odd little visitor. The boy holds a bladed weapon of some shape, recoiling back, staring at him. And -

 _Oh_.

Fear.

Disbelieving horror.

What a breathtaking sight. One he’s not seen since the crowds surrounding his own execution.

(Strange how the memory barely even pains him anymore. All he remembers after so many years is a strange hollowness where his heart once was, a heavy feeling he can no longer quite put a name to.)

“My dear boy,” he says, the words gurgling through the tar in his throat. “Have you been laboring under the misapprehension that I can be killed?”

-

Of course he has attempted to end his existence on his own. Many times. Ending the sickness by any means necessary is what he originally set out to do, after all.

He stopped when it became clear that the time spent waiting at the gates of Beyond was but a moment’s worth of time on Eos. So for all that it’s something to _do_ , it hardly seems worth the effort if it only prolongs his sentence.

Even the gods don’t talk to him anymore, when he tries. Being turned away at the gates by the darkness in his heart is an automatic process, it seems.

How uncharacteristically efficient of them.

-

It is a long time before the boy comes again. So long that, when he arrives, he is quite a bit taller, and his hair has grown out considerably. He also carries himself differently, wears a certain defensive hunch to his posture.

He only sits tucked into a far corner, watching the boy struggle to speak. The look on the boy’s face seems oddly familiar, and he wonders if the boy has learned what betrayal is at last.

“The world was pure darkness,” the boy says, eventually, “but I was born into a world enveloped in radiant light.”

He thinks of dear Somnus, of the blind faith his baby brother had displayed, so very long ago. “To children,” he says, “all the world is effervescent and shining, with nary a flaw to be seen.”

“Not me,” the boy says quickly. Under his breath he adds, “It’s… a dumb kids’ story, really.”

“Faerie tales and nursery rhymes - such curious things.” He leans forward, just a bit. “What does yours say? What does your world teach to its children?”

The boys seems startled by his interest. “That -” He swallows. “That the world ended, once. Broke apart into uncountable pieces, never to reconnect.”

“A cautionary tale, then,” he nods. “And what _dreadful_ folly of mankind led to such a grim fate?”

The boy shrugs. “Greed, it sounded like. Just says that everyone wanted to keep the most light for themselves, and that fighting over it was the birth of darkness.”

He hums, considering. “It does have a ring of truth to it, as legends often do.” Indeed, Solheim fell in much the same way, albeit on a somewhat broader scale.

Not that he was there, of course. Not even he is _that_ old.

But he grew up on stories of its grandeur, been present as newer, smaller kingdoms fought to rise up from its ashes. He witnessed that struggle, aided it where he could, and was damned by his own selflessness.

Now the darkness slowly consumes the world.

 _“O’er rotted soil,”_ he intones, _“under blighted sky, a dread Plague the Wicked has wrought. In the Light of the Gods, Sword-Sworn at his side, ‘gainst the dark the King’s battle is fought.”_

The boy scoffs. “Is that your world's version of the story?”

“Not at all. This is a story of the future rather than the past.”

The boy turns sharply to look at him.

 _“From the Heavens high to the Blessed below shines the Beam of a Peace long besought.”_ He modulates his voice as he recites the verse spoken by the first Oracle at the nadir of this world’s turning, mere days before the world he tried to save turned on him. _“‘Long live thy Line,’”_ he spits, _“‘and this Stone divine, for the Night When All comes to Naught.’”_

The boy is gone by the time he finishes. So in the absence of anyone else to talk to, he only stands up very slowly, and shows the walls of his prison all the compassion and ardor _he_ was granted, all those centuries ago.

(Just like their blows upon him, his outpouring of fury has no effect at all. This room, like him, cannot die, and so is cursed to death eternal.)

-

He hears loud, rapid footsteps long before he sees a shadow entering his domain. A curious aberration, considering he’d never once seen the boy break into a run, not even when -

The boy slides to a stop closer than he’s ever come before, grasps the bars with trembling hands.

“Did peace come after the darkness?” he gasps, almost frantic.

He only stares at the ceiling. “ _Did_ it? No. _Will_ it? Who can say?”

“ _You_ said!” the boy nearly shouts, punctuated with a slam against his cell door. “That - that _prophesy_ or whatever, it said ‘a peace long besought’ comes after the darkness.”

He angles his head towards the door, sees the boy crouched down just outside it, staring at him intently. “What interest have you in prophecies?” he asks.

“There was a prophecy in my story too,” the boy says. “A whole book full of them. But the prophecy is never mentioned in the children’s version of the story because _it didn’t come true_.”

Now he sits up. He looks the boy up and down, properly this time.

“Not yet, anyway,” the boy says, his mouth a grim line.

A startled chuckle escapes him, practically a derisive snort - for all that it seems to draw a scowl out of the boy.

 _“The fated land will be the battleground for a great war,”_ the boy says urgently. _“Light will see defeat and expire, while darkness prevails evermore.”_

“Your rhyme scheme needs work.”

“It’s all _pointless!_ ” the boy protests, slamming a hand on the bars once again. “Light _always_ fades. Darkness is the only thing that remains when light is gone - it’s eternal, and all this running around trying to preserve the light does _nothing_ to stop it!”

The boy is truly panicking now - eyes dilated, breath rapid and shallow. How extraordinary.

“I have to know,” the boy presses, eyes fervent. “Darkness can’t be stopped, but can it be survived? Can our hearts manufacture their own light, or at least adapt to a life without it? Is that what brings the peace? If we lose everything and _live_ , then what happens after?”

He sits back, somewhat put out. The child seems intelligent at the least - surely he shouldn't need it spelled out for him.

“My dear boy,” he says mildly. “Clearly there is only one way to find out.”

-

He decides, calmly and after some deliberation on the matter, to open his mouth and scream. Except he finds that he can’t do that, because he’s already screaming, has in fact been gabbling and begging and cursing and laughing on and off for years now and he never even noticed it.

It’s understandable, he thinks, that he’s been a bit too busy losing his faith to notice that he long ago lost his mind. Nothing wrong with it, and - honestly, who could blame him?

Still, presentation is important. So the shrieks and howls coalesce in his throat, wildfires banked to glowing embers, and the darkness pools around him and recedes to the home it has made under his skin.

The time is drawing near, now.

-

“Angelgard,” the boy says sharply, without preamble. “What is this place guarding? Because it clearly isn't you.”

He simpers. “You wound me.”

The boy rolls his eyes, then levels a glare. “‘A dread Plague the Wicked has wrought,’” he quotes, staring at him. “That's what you said is in here, _and_ out in the world. _All_ the worlds.*

“Every Star in the sky,” he agrees.

“And you're the source?”

“Depends on who you ask,” he replies, making idle motions with one hand. “I always found the official explanation a bit odd, myself, but I’m happy to play the part if that is Their desire.”

The boy scowls. “Where is your world’s keyhole?”

He tilts his head. “Pardon?”

“The keyhole!” The boy bangs on the bars again, such a dreadful tell. “The world’s heart!” he shouts, “Tell me where it is!”

He hums for a moment, more entertained than he’d like to admit. “The Heart of Eos, you say? _Well_ , the royal line of Lucis seems a good place to start. I hear tell they’ve got something _terribly_  important in their keeping -”

“I’ve _seen_ the Crystal,” the boy says through clenched teeth, “and it’s only half the problem. The other half has to be _here_ , because the only sensible place to put a keyhole of that magnitude is in a place where only the worthy can set foot.”

He smiles. “And what does that make you?”

The boy does not break his gaze. “The one with the key,” he says.

He considers that. His smile gradually falls away, to be replaced with something… firmer.

“What do you want with such a prize?” he asks, carefully.

For a moment, the boy doesn’t answer. “Darkness is eating at this world,” he says instead, “but not like the heartless do. It’s different, it’s - slower. And if you _are_ the darkness of this world, then that means it has to be here. If I unlock it -”

“You would destroy it,” he says.

The boy swallows. “Yes.”

Slowly, his smile creeps back. “And then you would have your answer.”

“...Yes.”

The sheer absurdity of the boy’s proposal hits him in that moment, but the laughter he expects does not come. Instead, he wonders. Pooled shadows and banked fires stir in his depths as an _idea_ he had been so vaguely considering now peeks into the realm of possibility.

The boy is not looking at him. Instead, he is looking behind him, at the far wall of his cell, where the faint light of morning never quite reaches.

Well then. The children of the gods do avenge their parents in _such_ interesting ways.

“Why, if you wish to come _in_ ,” he purrs, “you would have to let me _out_.”

The boy is silent for a long moment. He places a hand on one of the bars. “Would you tell me your name?” the boy asks.

He smiles. “I shall if you tell me yours.”

The boy frowns. “You first.”

His smile only grows wider. Names are powerful, names are important. Names show the truth of men’s hearts.

“Ardyn Lucis Caelum,” he says.

The boy considers, and something materializes in his hands: a key, sharp-edged and long as a broadsword, the face of a goat at its hilt and a dark gazing eye on the end. It is a weapon with no name. It is a key to the very heart of Eos.

“Xehanort Izunia,” he says, and points his key at the lock on Ardyn’s cell.

\---

_Elsewhere, some 80 years later…_

“Do ya hafta go?” Goofy asks, sounding forlorn.

“Well… I _did_ doze off,” Sora hedges, not really looking at his companions. “I just… have some stuff to take care of.”

He doesn’t know what stuff, exactly. Not yet anyway. But he can’t be too worried about it, because following his wherever his heart leads him usually points him in the right direction for whatever it is he’s looking for.

_(A sardonic voice - “Aww… Thank you, Sora’s heart, for pushing him right into our clutches!”)_

...At least, that _used_ to be the case.

He still feels… hollowed out, on the inside. Emptied of everything that makes him _him_ in preparation for something else to be poured inside. Riku saved him, of course. But all the pieces of himself don’t really fit together inside his skin like they used to. There’s… _more_ there, now, but also less, and he rattles around the new space like a child in a house full of ghosts. Memories that are his but _not_ drift in through the cracks, trying to fill the void. But it’s _cavernous_ , and all the thoughts and emotions crash into each other in ways he can make no sense of.

Donald seems to hear whatever is in his voice. “Are you gonna be okay?” he asks. It’s an unusual display of concern, but he does have his moments.

“Yeah,” Sora says. And he is okay, really. You can be okay and confused and a little bit scared at the same time. “I won’t be long.”

After a pause, Mickey simply says, “Be careful.”

“ _Very_ careful,” Riku adds.

Sora can practically _hear_ Riku rolling his eyes at him, so he looks back with a bright grin.

“Right,” he says. “See you soon!”

He lifts his keyblade, a gesture so familiar by now that it seems effortless. At his will, the keyhole shimmers open, and Sora lets himself be drawn through it with an irrepressible smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Omake_
> 
>  
> 
> “The fated land will be the battleground for a great war,” the boy says urgently. “Light will see defeat and expire, while darkness prevails evermore.”
> 
> “Your rhyme scheme needs work.”
> 
> “It’s translated.”
> 
> “Ah, I see. Understandable.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A scattered dream that's like a far-off memory.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One singular detail of note: I'm pretending that Crowe made it all the way to Tenebrae before she was finally caught and killed in Kingsglaive. Literally everything else from here on out is about as canon-compliant as we can make it. Enjoy!

Traverse Town is so familiar by now that Sora can - in this case  literally \- find his way there in his sleep.

Twinkling lights glow under the perpetual night like stars in the sky, up on street lamps or strung between rooftops like beads. Sora has always found this comforting, somehow - that even though the world was always dark, it was a safe sort of darkness. Anyone who found themselves here would be able to rest peacefully, here in this sanctuary for wayward souls.

Sora feels that same sense of home now, laughing and surrounded by all the friends he’d made in the sleeping worlds. Meow-Wow, Necho, Yoggy, that weird affectionate panda he named Kooma, and his  _ enormous _ Zolephant all crowd around Sora just as soon as he arrives, and he hugs and pets every single one of them. Halbird and Eaglider circle above the rest, cawing noisily, and Electricorn prods him with its horn, demanding a treat. 

Sora can only laugh, because he’s not dreaming quite the same way as before, and doesn’t have any cookies on him. But even though he can only offer scritches under its chin,  _ just _ where Electricorn likes it, the spirit seems content with that and curls up next to the dozing Pegaslick.

Sora feels a surge of affection for these funny little creatures. His dreams haven’t changed in the slightest, and  _ that _ is more reassuring than anything else he could have found here.

Meow-Wow is still running circles around his legs; Sora trips immediately, but the adorable little sausage roll catches him, breaking his fall with a comical bouncing balloon sound. All his dream-eater friends surround him, squeaking and trilling and gliding through the air, through his dreams, through his  _ mind _ . 

And as long as they stayed, his dreams would sleep safely in the dark.

Sora cannot help the choked-sounding laugh that rises from his chest.

“Thanks,” he says through a watery smile. “You guys are the best.”

\--

_ “You guys… are the best.” _

\--

“-oct? Noctis.” A long-fingered hand taps at his shoulder, gently first, then more insistent.

Noctis groans and rolls over, entangling himself further into warm blankets. Warm is good. He likes warm.

A sigh. “Noct, wake up.” 

He frowns, and places the familiar voice.“Five more minutes, Ig,” he says through a soft yawn.

Noct’s bleary voice barely makes its way out of the pile of bedclothes. There is a small tuft of black hair poking out of one uncovered corner, but beyond that, there is no sign that the crown prince of Lucis is on this bed. 

Ignis raises one eyebrow. “No.  _ Up _ , Noct. Or I shall resort to drastic measures. No time to waste today.”

The blankets shift and the tuft of black hair disappears. Noctis is silent. 

“Very well then,” Ignis intones, knowing full well that Noctis can hear him. 

He grips the far edge of the blankets tightly, and with a deep breath in, yanks them off the bed. Noctis squawks grumpily and chucks a pillow at him, which he dodges with the grace of long practice. He came prepared. Out of a pocket comes a flask with ice magic inside it. A twist, and he pours ice cold over Noctis’s prone form. Not enough to hurt, but more than enough to dislodge a stubborn sleeper. And no wet mess to clean up after.

Noctis comes to full wakefulness with a shout, leaping clear of the bed and landing on the floor with a thump. 

Ignis gives him a pleasant smile. “Good morning, Your Highness. It is ten a.m. and breakfast awaits you in the sitting room.”

“Fuck off,” Noctis mutters from the floor on the other side of his bed.

“Certainly, Noct. Simply name the date and time.”

Noctis releases a loud and long-suffering groan of mid-morning existential despair, but Ignis grants him no quarter. Probably because he’d been up since the crack of fucking dawn, the jerk. At length, Noctis props himself up and does his best to glare at his advisor. “Satisfied?”

Iggy just gives him a  _ look _ and exits the room. Noctis is tempted to just lay on the floor for a while out of spite, but now his pajamas are icy and uncomfortable, and he knows by the time he gets dressed for the day he’ll be awake enough.

He sheds his cold clothes and stumbles over to the dresser in search of something comfortable, wondering vaguely about the dream he’d just been woken from. Details were already slipping away, but he remembered it being dark. Not completely dark, of course, though the source of the light was kinda unclear - maybe a campfire?

_ Probably dreaming about camping in the wilderness once we finally ditch this city _ , he thinks, with more excitement about the prospect than he’d ever admit to Gladio. Noctis frowns, trying to recall more, but trying produces an odd sense of anxiety, like prodding at a scab that’s not quite healed. 

“Hey Noct, you up yet or what?” Noctis turns to see Prompto sticking his head in the door, grinning brightly at him. 

“Oh fuck off,” Noctis says for the second time, though somewhat muffled through the t-shirt he pulls over his head. “It’s a process, alright!”

“Quite an elaborate one, I assure you,” Ignis quips from somewhere beyond the door. The smell of frying bacon wafts in.

Prompto looks backward, presumably toward Ignis. “What’d you do to get him up this time?”

“Just a chilling wake up call,” Ignis deadpans, as if he  _ hadn’t _ dumped ice magic all over him. 

Prompto makes little effort to hide his laugh. “Looks like my wet-willie services won’t be needed then.”

He imagines setting Prompto on fire with his eyes. Just a little. 

“Get a move on, princess,” Gladio growls, also from the next room. “You’ve still got shit to pack, and like hell am I lugging it all myself.”

“Why is everyone on my ass this morning?” Noct grouses, tugging on his Crownsguard boots.

“Gotta up your standard of living once you're a married man,” laughs Prompto. “No more of this layabout biz! You ready or what?”

“Keep in mind that we still have to meet with His Majesty before departing,” Ignis reminds him.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, patting himself down. He’s forgetting something, he’s sure of it, but he can’t think what. Most of his bedroom is bare - the furniture came with the apartment, he already sent off Luna’s notebook last night, and most of the rest of his personal items were packed away in storage. Except for…

With a small  _ ha! _ of triumph, Noctis swipes his carved wooden Carbuncle charm off the nightstand and tucks it into his pocket.

Everyone’s waiting for him, of course. Ignis is at his habitual post in the kitchen, and the source of the bacon he smelled earlier. Gladio sprawls across the couch with a novel propped open in one hand. Prompto gives him a friendly shove as he exits his room, and sits down to finish his breakfast while Noctis only just starts on his. 

_ That dream… _ Noctis thinks as he slides into place at the table.  _ What was it? _ Carbuncle had been there, which wasn’t uncommon, but normally when the little dream-spirit visited him it was somewhere… bright. Fantastical city-scapes, marvelous gardens, or carnivals strung with fairy lights all littered the nights of his childhood, but this was definitely different. Aside from the fire in the center where the four of them stood - and it  _ had _ been him and the guys, Noctis was pretty sure - the darkness had been endless.

Carbuncle also hadn’t spoken to him at all, which - okay, that’s not  _ that _ unusual either, given how brief its appearance was. All it had really done was walk up to him, out of the dark, with someone vaguely person-shaped following in the spirit’s wake…

Noctis is jerked quite literally out of his thoughts by a large foot kicking at the leg of his chair, and nearly faceplants into his breakfast. “Gladio, what the hell?”

His Shield just grins at him. “Never saw a guy eat while  _ still asleep _ . Shouldda known you’d be the one to find a way to make it work.”

“You are zonked out something  _ bad _ , dude, Prompto teases.

A shrug automatically makes its way over his shoulders. “There was something about my dream. And I can’t figure it out.”

“Soooo… you thought you’d try and fall asleep in your food to see if that helped?” Gladio snorts. “That’s just a good way to get egg on your face, Noct.”

Noctis rolls his eyes as Prompto laughs at the pun. 

“Eat up,” Ignis admonishes. “There will be plenty of time to think on dreams in the car. I’m sure you’ll fall asleep quite quickly once we’re on the road.”

Noctis sighs.  _ To Altissia… _

\--

The little furred, fox-like creature is a dream-eater that Sora’s never seen before.

It’s pretty tiny, actually - even smaller than Meow-Wow back when it was a kitten. Or a puppy. Sora’s not exactly sure. But it’s got soft, white-ish fur, long pointy ears, and a small ruby horn set between quick, dark eyes. 

It opens its muzzle and  _ squeaks _ at him, and Sora can’t say with absolute certainty that he didn’t squeal right back in sheer delight. 

“Hey, little guy!” he says, offering a hand for the creature to sniff. “What’s your name?”

_ I’m Carbuncle! _ the creature says - not with words, but plain as day all the same. It tucks its head under Sora’s waiting hand, and he obligingly scratches at the base of one of those long ears.

“Nice to meet you,” he says. “I’m Sora!”

Carbuncle pauses and looks up at him in something like surprise. 

_ The sky? _ it says, the end lilted upward like a question.

“Uh, yeah,” says Sora, standing upright again. “That’s what it means.”

_ Oh! _ Carbuncle says, and then it leaps into the air, squeaking excitedly.  _ Then you’re like him! The same sky! _

“What?”

_ Come on! _ And Carbuncle takes off, a streak of white fur in the darkness.

Sora’s running after it before he knows what he’s doing, and realizes belatedly that he’s probably an idiot. “Hey, wait a minute!” he yells instead, slowing down.

To his complete surprise, Carbuncle pauses, and circles back to him.  _ What is it? _

And… Sora kind of doesn’t know, other than that he just got into a  _ ton _ of trouble for following nightmares and unfamiliar apparitions into the depths of his dreams, and that it might be smart to avoid doing that  _ again _ not even an hour after Riku risked his life to rescue him.

On the other hand, though… whatever this Carbuncle is, it is  _ way _ too cute to be a nightmare.

“Are you a dream-eater?” Sora finds himself asking - because upon closer inspection, Carbuncle doesn’t have any visible sigil on its body.

_ Hmm... _ Carbuncle appears to think about this.  _ I guess I am! You already woke up though… _

Sora looks around him and pats himself down experimentally. “I did?” he asks. He seems just as asleep as he was before.

Carbuncle sits down and begins scratching itself with a hind leg.  _ You were asleep and couldn’t wake up _ , it says. 

Oh. “Y-yeah,” Sora says. “I was.”

_ Were you scared? _

Sora thinks about this. He doesn’t remember being afraid, exactly, at least not before Riku woke him up. During the dream he was mostly just sad, and by the time he realized he probably  _ ought _ to be afraid, he was way too tired to even try.

_ Mine wasn’t afraid _ , Carbuncle says without waiting for his answer.  _ He said so! But I think he just didn’t know how badly he was hurt. _

“Your… what?”

_ Mine! _ says Carbuncle, explaining nothing.  _ Mine got hurt, and he wouldn’t wake up, so his father asked me to help him, and I did. And he still has my totem, so that means he’s mine! So I can see him every night if I want! _

“Ohhhh!” Sora thinks he understands now. “You help people who get stuck in their dreams, right?”

_ Yes! _

Sora grins, and fluffs up Carbuncle’s fur. The spirit leans up into the touch, then begins weaving around his legs like an affectionate cat. “Must’ve just gotten to me a little late,” Sora muses. Then, at Carbuncle’s inquisitive chirrup, adds, “Oh, don’t worry about it though! My best friend Riku woke me up instead, so everything’s alright now!”

_ So can we go? _ Carbuncle asks impatiently.

It’s still Sora’s first instinct to say  _ Sure! _ Which… yeah, he probably ought to stop that. Or at least rein it in. “Go where?”

_ This way! _ And the spirit darts off again.

“No, just - Wait a sec!”

Again, Carbuncle obliges, and tilts its head at him questioningly. 

It takes a moment before whatever it is that’s pulling at his chest can shape itself into words. The memory of an endless sleep is overlayed with another in his mind. And Sora knows now, from his long dream, whose memory it is.

“If…” he tries, “If you can help people who are asleep and can’t wake up… could you help a friend of mine?”

Sora hopes that was the right thing to ask. Something warm blossoms in his chest, and he thinks that maybe it was.

Carbuncle sits again, forepaws placed delicately together.  _ What happened to them? _

“I’m not sure exactly,” Sora says. He tries to uncover the memories shifting around his heart, to pull at that sense of  _ someone else _ sleeping within him, but it’s already growing fainter. Back to sleep. “I don’t know where he is, only that his name is Ventus.”

The spirit’s long, bottlebrush tail flicks to and fro as it considers.  _ If I look for your friend _ , it says, eventually,  _ would you help mine? _

“Sure thing!” The answer is out of Sora’s mouth before his brain even has time to consider it, but he can’t bring himself to regret it. Carbuncle is nice, and whoever its friend is has to be nice too. Besides, if this spirit can find Ven, it would bring them all one step closer to finding all the others whose hearts were lost to the dark.

No one deserves the kind of fate that brings.

_ Good! _ says Carbuncle, jumping excitedly again.  _ Follow me! _

For a third time, the little fox-like dream-eater - or a creature close enough to be one - scurries off into the darkness. Sora keeps pace, running along the trail of bright light Carbuncle leaves in its wake like a path. He doesn’t look around, exactly, preferring to keep his guide in sight, but he can’t help noticing the way the dreamscape changes around them as they run. Faces pass by, places too. Not like dropping into a sleeping world, but running past it,  _ through _ it.

Sora opens his eyes - he doesn’t know when he closed them, actually - but it’s still dark. It’s nighttime here. He stands on a rocky plinth that’s aglow with runes, and at its center is the last glowing embers of an old fire. Before him is a tent, its flap partially open. There are people inside, fast asleep and clinging to one another like they are the last bit of light left in the world.

_ This is still the dream _ , Carbuncle says, nosing fondly at a head of night-black hair.  _ Above, mine begins on the path that ends with him here. Below, he remembers the road that led to that beginning. _

The landscape blurs, but there is still no drop, only change. Brighter, vivid colors bathed in daylight. Sora feels himself rising.

_ I asked the Astrals for one more chance to fix it, _ Carbuncle whispers. _ They won’t give me another after this, and dawn won’t wait. The night always ends. _

Rising. This isn’t like dropping into the sleeping worlds, but that isn’t what he’s doing, is it? This world is awake, very much so, but unmoving, unchanging, caught in a dreamlike cycle.

_ The dream always fades… _

He wonders, briefly, why he cannot feel the Heart of this world.

_...to reality. _

-

Sora wakes.

Carbuncle is gone. For some reason he is a little bit saddened by this.

But the sky is a cloudless blue, bright in his eyes. So he shades them with one hand, winces briefly, and sits up.

The area he finds himself in is  _ beautiful, _ competing with Radiant Garden for its sheer amount of flowers, all blue-violet and fluttery, their perfume infusing the air like a cloud. His eyes go to the far distance and he sees mountains bracketing him inside a valley, white tops indicating snow. He can hear a river nearby, water burbling happily, and with no other real idea of where to go, he goes to find it.

Water almost always means people, eventually. 

‘Eventually’ turns out to be small floating mountains connected by bridges, fed by the river he’d followed. Water cascades in multiple small waterfalls, splashing from one mountain to the next like an ornate fountain. Each mountain had a collection of trees, roots sometimes breaking through the rock to hold it all together. One such tree, full of leaves, also holds a figure wrapped in black, hunching over an empty space.

Sora quietly jumps up to that floating mountain, sidling up to the trunk and calls out, “What’cha doin’?”

His voice  _ echoes _ in the large space, bouncing off the sides of the surrounding mountains and startling the figure in black. A few loose leaves rain down from the figure’s perch, and they -  _ he _ \- hisses in dismay and irritation.

Another head pops up from one mountain over, voice very clearly feminine. “What the  _ fuck? _ ”

There’s a bang-pop from the figure in the tree over Sora’s head, the sound exploding in his ears and making him wince. A  _ twang _ from the other mountain says a projectile went whinging in a direction not originally shot in - flashbacks to Xigbar rolling in the back of his head.

A fireball comes roaring into the tree, exploding in a mess of leaves, tree branches, and cursing strong enough to turn even  _ Riku’s _ ears pink had he been there, the figure in black tumbling from the tree and returning fire from his gun.

Sora hops back from the encroaching fight as the feminine figure he’d heard comes charging up the bridge, more fireballs blasting into the figure in black. 

Aaaand they’re on fire now. Sora stares, his jaw somewhere on the ground.

A thundara from the  _ very _ pissed off woman sends the man soaring off his feet and into a lump of black cloth and groaning.

“Now who the fucking hell are you, you -” she snarls, pinning the man to the ground and ripping off a black cloth from his face. “ _ LUCHE? _ ”

‘Luche’ squwaks and starts to squirm. “It’s not what you think, Crowe!”

“Then what the hell is it? Because it looks like you just tried to kill me!” ‘Crowe’ yells back.

“Drautos sent me!”

“Oh yeah I’m gonna believe  _ that! _ What the fuck, Luche! We’re friends! We’re  _ Kingsglaive! _ Practically family!”

“My family got sold out by a king who hides behind a wall, and so did yours!”

“And that means you try to kill  _ me? _ That makes no fucking  _ sense, _ Luche!”

“Neither does this damn treaty and you know it! Crowe,  _ listen _ ,” he begs, pitching his voice lower. “Drautos really  _ did _ send me, he’s got a plan to fix this if you’ll just -”

Crowe gives the man a swift rabbit punch to the forehead, and Luche falls silent.

She sighs an aeroga’s worth of air and her shoulders drop as the silence grows, head shaking from side to side like she can’t believe what she just heard. “Astrals  _ damn _ it, Luche.”

Sora creeps forward, afraid to break the silence in case he  _ also _ gets a fireball to the face but knowing that he can’t stay quiet after what he just saw. “Um… hi?”

Crowe doesn’t really look at him, only waves a frustrated hand in his general direction. “Yeah, get the hell outta there you dumbass kid, I know you’re there.”

He promptly comes out from behind the rock and stands almost to attention. Every woman he’s heard with  _ that _ tone of voice - mostly Tifa in a bad mood - is badass enough to hand him  _ his _ ass without thinking about it. “I’m Sora. Sorry about… this?”

Again, she doesn’t acknowledge him much, only stares at her unconscious comrade…  _ former _ comrade. “ _ Fuck _ ,” she breathes, rubbing at her face. “This is bad, this is…” She pauses, then starts methodically going through Luche’s pockets until she comes up with - a charred lump of plastic. “Of fucking  _ course _ I fried it.”

Sora blinks as a lightbulb goes off in his head. “Can I help?

“ _ You _ are lucky to be alive!” Crowe snarls at him, actually looking at him for the first time. “I don’t know what the hell you’re doing here, or why you’re dressed in black, because you don’t look like no Crownsguard I’ve ever seen, but you have just waded knee-deep in international  _ shit _ and I am giving you exactly  _ one _ opportunity to walk away.”

Sora looks for a long moment at the unconscious man. Crowe’s friend, who tried to kill her. He swallows and says, softly, “I, uh. I sort of know what you’re going through? I mean, not to this extent, I guess, but -”

“Get to the point, shorty.”

“I’ll help,” he says, simply. “I know it seems bad now, but. You’re real strong, and I know you can fix it somehow - especially if you have your friends helping you! So, I’ll help too.”

Crowe stares at him for a beat, singularly unimpressed. “I cannot take a godsdamned  _ kid _ with me to - aw shit, where even  _ can _ I go with this?” She snarls, mostly to herself, and bangs the heel of her hand against her forehead. 

Sora, knowing frustration like that on a personal level, zooms in. “What do you need to do? Make it simple,” he says, in his calmest voice. 

Crowe, internally, truly does not know what to do. Glaives operate as a  _ unit _ in all things, but she’s here alone, in deep cover, with  _ no  _ communication lines save for the transceiver in her watch linked to the comb in her satchel - and she can’t be in two places at once. She has her orders, yes, but those orders were clearly compromised from the start. If Luche wasn’t bullshitting her and the corruption goes as high as  _ Titus fucking Drautos _ , then the entire Kingsglaive and possibly all of Insomnia are well and truly screwed.

“I have to get back to Insomnia before the signing,” she says, quiet but firm. “Something is very wrong. But I can’t leave Tenebrae without the Princess.” If Crowe’s orders were suspect, that only makes it  _ more _ imperative that she ensure the Oracle’s safety, not less.

“Princess?” Sora chirps. “I’m good with Princesses!” Okay so his track record wasn’t the  _ best _ , but he got to them at the end! “I can make sure she’s safe.”

This time Crowe’s ‘unimpressed’ look has an edge of ‘are you actually stupid’ to it. “What in the  _ hell _ are you talking about, kid? Lady Lunafreya is under every guard imaginable, every wall, every lock. You are not just gonna walk in there and -”

“Well, actually,” Sora says, summoning something bright to his hands, “I’m good with locks too.”

Crowe’s eyes go wide. She stares at what’s in his hands. Glances at Luche on the ground. Looks back to Sora. Without her really meaning it to, a decision clicks into place. 

She’s got the Empire, the Glaives, and - and this cannot be emphasized enough -  _ Titus Motherfucking Drautos _ to deal with. Maybe her only ally is one stupidly lucky child with magic that  _ doesn't _ come from the king, magic like her own, but until she can make contact with Nyx, she has no choice but to make use of him.

“What the hell,” says Crowe. “Can’t make it any worse than it is.”

At this point, there's no such thing as a liability.

\---

“Drautos,” Noctis calls with a lazy wave as he descends the Citadel steps, away from his father, away from the life he knew. “He’s in your hands.”

And he does his best to walk tall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Crowe lives.
> 
> Everything else snowballs from there. :D


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God, I want to dream again.  
> Take me where I've never been.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another month, another update. And since I was just a few days too early to react to the _announcement_ in November, let me just say:
> 
> I am fucking livid.
> 
> They had once chance, ONE CHANCE, to give Lunafreya the story she deserves. And they didn't blow that chance, oh no, because at least then they would have _tried_. They just gave up on it. Just like in the game, those below pay for the mistakes of those up above.
> 
> Am I excited for Episode Ardyn? Kinda. But that wasn't what I wanted from this coming year. I wanted Aranea, and the story of how Niflheim's rise to imperialism - the sort of culture they had and what drove them toward conquest, the fallout of the drastic climate change resulting from Shiva's death and how they somehow did not learn from it... or, if they did, how voices of dissent were silenced in pursuit of godlike power. I wanted Lunafreya with all my heart and soul, because I love her to bits and I want vengeance on the writers who fucking _shafted_ her. And I wanted Noctis, and a resolution that didn't have to end with all the characters I care about miserable and broken, paying for mistakes that were never theirs.
> 
> It has been _So. Damn. Long._ since I cared about something the way I care about FFXV. After years of one mismanagement clusterfuck after another they gave us something beautiful, something that was maybe half of a great game and a third of an incredible story. I appreciate all the efforts made until now to patch it into what it could have been. But I am so angry about this. 
> 
> So here. I present the first of MANY Lunafreya POVs, because like all of us, she deserves better. So if you, reader, are as angry as we are, then stick with us. We'll get you the golden ending we were promised.
> 
> -Ryuu

It’s one of her earliest memories, from when she was very small, and everything looked so colorful and shining. She couldn’t have been more than five or six at the time.

The memory itself isn’t much. Just the nightshirt Ravus was wearing as he held her - not white for a change, but a soft blue, threaded with grey. Lunafreya remembers that fabric clutched in both hands as she leaned against him and sobbed.

She doesn’t remember what she was crying about, only that her brother held her in his arms and let her, without judgement or hesitation.

-

So often when she was growing up, courtiers to the royal house of Tenebrae told Lunafreya to “act appropriate to her station”. Speak softly. Be polite. Never show anger, or sadness, or fear.

Ravus never would. He’d pick her up and tickle her until she shrieked with laughter, boost her up to climb trees, distract the servants to keep them from noticing the grass stains on her pristine white skirts. 

When Noctis came, and once he was healthy enough to move around, Ravus would help Lunafreya carry his wheelchair down the manor stairs to the gardens. He watched them fondly while Luna, smudged with dirt, brought as many sylleblossoms as she could carry to dump them in her new friend’s lap. She did cartwheels in the grass to show Noctis what  _ he _ would be able to do one day, once he was better, and that night Ravus applauded her skill.

Thinking back on those days never fails to make Lunafreya smile, even now.

Even now.

-

Lunafreya remembers only flashes of the day the Empire came, seeking Noctis and his father in a moment of vulnerability. Only images in sequence, like a photo album turning page by page.

She remembers wheeling Noctis toward the delegation for a formal farewell, down in the valley as was tradition. 

She remembers not the  _ sound _ of the approaching dropships, but the way the tall trees were bent out of their way by the heat of their entry.

An unassailable figure in magitek armor -

Courtiers scattering, calling for guards that were already dead -

Ravus on his knees, clutching a bullet wound in his arm and looking smaller than she had ever seen him -

_ Fire. _

Lunafreya didn’t see what happened. She only remembers that Ravus screamed, and Queen Sylva did not.

(To this day, Ravus refuses to tell her what  _ he _ remembers. And Lunafreya cannot understand why, because she  _ knows _ Ravus isn’t trying to forget.)

She remembers King Regis, surrounded by royal arms, and the armored figure flying away from them and pinned against a tree with ghostly crystalline blades.

She remembers Ravus, his arms covered in burns and his face splattered with their mother’s blood, begging for the Lucian king’s aid.

She remembers Noctis’s terrified face, eyes locked on her own as Regis pulled them both along, away from the fighting,  _ away from her brother _ .

She remembers letting go of Regis’s hand.

-

(Often, the occupying soldiers would tell her and Ravus that King Regis was to blame for their imprisonment - that he was the true target in their siege of Fenestala Manor, and the Nox Fleuret children only collateral damage. Damage that could have been avoided, if only the rebellious king had surrendered himself when he had the chance.

Damage that could have been avoided, Ravus would mutter, if only the cowardly king had stayed to fight.

But Lunafreya remembers that image so well, of dozens of ethereal glaives materializing around the King of Lucis as he brought them to bear against Glauca, the ring on his hand blazing with power as he fought. It simply wasn’t enough.

She would tell her brother: there is no cowardice in running from a battle that cannot be won. Only foolishness in dying without cause, where you might otherwise live to fight another day.

Is that what you would say about mother? Ravus would ask her.

Lunafreya doesn’t have an answer.)

-

The memory’s not so old.

When Lunafreya was thirteen years old, she found herself alone with an Imperial commander. It was night, storming outside the many-paned windows, and the man loomed over her, leering at her hungrily.

She doesn’t remember what he said to her, only that she timidly shook her head, not daring to meet his eyes. He frowned, and smacked her across the room, startling a small cry from her but little else. She scrambled backward, but this only drew a smile from the man, who closed the distance and then some in a single, long stride.

A sword thrust itself between them, and stopped the commander in his tracks.

Ravus.

“Is there something I can help you with, Commander Uldor?” her brother asked, his tone low and mild even as he pointed a blade at the man’s neck.

The commander’s lip curled in a sneer. “I don’t recall giving you permission to leave your quarters.”

“I don’t recall the future Oracle giving  _ you _ permission to lay hands on her.”

“You both ought to learn your place,” the commander said, in a tone that was quiet and gentle in all the worst ways. “ I don’t need permission from  _ prisoners _ , not even the little princess.”

Ravus trembled. It was barely visible, but there. “People can’t just  _ take _ whatever they want,” he said softly. “Not even you.”

Uldor smirked down at them, a slimy, oily expression. “You’ve got a lot to learn about life in the Empire,  _ Lord _ Ravus.”

It was unmistakably an insult. House Fleuret was no longer the ruling family of Tenebrae, merely a minor noble house in the Empire, and the loss of Ravus’s title as  _ Prince _ still stung him deeply. 

But Ravus only stared at Uldor for a long moment, then with a slight flourish, presented his sword, hilt-first, to the commander.

“So teach me,” he said.

\--

The first message is hidden under the plate for dinner delivered to her room.

_ Princess Lunafreya _ , it reads,  _ if you received this message and want to leave, burn this letter in a shallow dish and leave it in your easternmost window. -A friend _

She does so, without question. The wording is vague enough that even if this is some Imperial test of compliance, she can claim that she simply misunderstood its intent. The flame, once it touches the note, burns a vivid scarlet, and keeps burning throughout the night despite having no other fuel.

The next morning, there is a bird with a scrap of paper held in its beak, tapping insistently at that very window - a crow.

_ Transport to Accordo inbound. Be ready. _

Lunafreya’s heart stills. Accordo. It’s still Imperial territory, but far enough away from Niflheim proper that its hold is weaker there. From there, from Altissia perhaps, securing transport across the strait to Lucis would be easy. And then -

Pryna barks, and the crow flaps away in surprise. Lunafreya leans out the window as far as she can, to try and see where it returns to… but it disappears behind a nearby peak before she can track it very far.

When she looks back inside, Umbra is there, bearing a familiar red notebook, worn and well loved.

Lunafreya smiles.

-

Days pass. More messages arrive, but do not clarify much. Lunafreya thinks that is probably intentional, in case any of them are intercepted. She reads and tends to her flower garden to pass the time, but… these are all books she already knows well, and access to anything beyond local news articles is severely restricted. And, despite their graceful and fragile appearances, sylleblossoms are quite hardy little flowers. They need little beyond water and moonlight to thrive, and could easily survive months or even years on their own.

In spite of everything, Lunafreya is going a little bit stir crazy.

She may be a hostage - has been for most of her life now - but she has always been a highly  _ mobile _ hostage. The numerous public health crises in the years following her mother’s murder forced Niflheim to allow Lunafreya’s ascension at sixteen. It made her the youngest Oracle in history, but it allowed her to  _ travel _ . She had been all over Niflheim’s conquered territories and could mostly roam where she wished - albeit under heavy guard. 

The guards were not for her safety, of course. They were for her compliance. No one would dare harm Lunafreya after the fallout of Oracle Sylva’s untimely death, not even the guards themselves. No, the purpose of the guards was to threaten the people  _ around _ her to keep her in line.

It was exhausting, and nerve-wracking. But as long as she could go where she was needed, it was enough.

When the terms of the peace treaty with Lucis were first announced, reporters clamored for a statement, and Lunafreya happily gave them one. She stressed that, above all else, her duties as Oracle would come first. 

So when she heard an addendum on the radio, directly after her statement, claiming that her duties as Oracle would be suspended until the marriage was complete, Lunafreya was quite surprised and more than a little affronted, but as helpless as ever to set so much as a toe out of line.

That was almost a week ago.

-

Ravus returns home from Gralea with the news that they will both be attending the signing ceremony in Insomnia.

Lunafreya is stunned, and says as much. Of all the things she might have expected to come of the peace treaty, going to Insomnia was not one of them.

“It stands to reason,” Ravus says over their shared dinner. “Your marriage to Prince Noctis is one of the terms of the treaty. Obviously all parties involved would want you both present.”

“But Noctis isn't in Insomnia,” she insists. Noctis’s letter had been very clear on that - that his father was sending him away to Altissia for their wedding, has  _ already _ sent him, by now. 

Ravus’s hands still, tension present in the line of his shoulders.. “He told you this in a letter?”

Lunafreya nods. Ravus always made his disapproval of her continued correspondence with Noctis plain, but had never told any Imperials about the notebook either.

After a barely-audible sigh, Ravus says, “Probably for the best, I suppose.” 

Lunafreya frowns, looks at him intently, but she truly cannot tell if he’s keeping something from her or not.

Carefully, she asks, “Hasn't Niflheim’s aim always been to seize the Crystal from Insomnia? Why would they give up on that now, in exchange for mere territory?”

Ravus says nothing, only continues his dinner with harsh, frustrated movements.

“Ravus,” she presses. “What if something is wrong?”

“Then I’ll handle it,” her brother replies in a clipped tone. Then, more softly, “No harm will come to you while I live, Lunafreya. You know this.”

And -  _ Astrals _ , she does know. Ravus is her stalwart support and dearest friend, for all that he spent years of their adolescence training in Gralea - rarely visiting home and always covered in signs of abuse when he did. Signs Lunafreya quietly healed him of without asking where he got them. And if his eyes grew damp and his shoulders trembled under a kind touch, she didn't mention that either. They don't see eye to eye on  _ anything _ anymore, but they are the only family each other has left. And they cling to that family with all their considerable strength.

Ravus  _ loves _ her. And she loves him, more than he might understand.

But just as his love for her involves standing in the way of those who would do her harm, her love for him means ensuring there still is a world for him to return to.

Noctis is here, the anointed King of Light. As his Oracle, Lunafreya's own duty is very clear.

“I know you believe that,” she whispers, and watches her brother’s fists curl.

They both know the price of the covenant.

-

_ Compromised. Peace treaty suspect, DO NOT GO TO INSOMNIA. Rendezvous at extraction point, leaving  _ _ today _ _. _

Lunafreya frowns at the latest message, then glances at Maria. Maria had been the one to deliver the first note, and made sure to cause some small distraction whenever Lunafreya received another one. The maid can only shrug helplessly, just as confused as she is.

Neither of them speak - there are guards outside the door - but Maria busies herself with noisy chores while Lunafreya destroys the note. The candleflame turns bright crimson as the paper burns - proof that it is from the same sender as all the others. She then blows the flame out and relights the wick with another candle, this time of normal fire.

Satisfied that nothing is out of place, Maria takes her leave, leaving Lunafreya to her thoughts.

It’s mid-morning yet, so “today” is still rather a broad stretch of time. She is due to leave for Insomnia with the rest of the Imperial delegation in another three days time, so the impending deadline can't be the reason for this sudden haste.

Her eyes drift to the red notebook.

Noctis said his father sent him away to Altissia. From his phrasing she might even conclude that Noctis is under the impression that their wedding is meant to  _ precede _ the signing ceremony, not the other way around.

And Lunafreya has suspicions that her anonymous benefactor is an agent of Lucis as well, sent by the king to spirit her away to Accordo. To  _ Altissia _ . 

_ Before _ she can be sent with the delegation to Insomnia.

Which in all likelihood means that King Regis knows something is wrong.

“Gentiana,” she whispers.

The High Messenger’s cool voice slips over her like snowmelt. “The lady is anxious.”

Her fingers shake, ever so slightly. “Is… is this it?”

Gentiana pauses for an agonizing moment, then inclines her head. “Though he knows it not, the true king sets forth on a path long ordained.”

Lunafreya stands abruptly, her chair screeching on the marble floor. 

Her bedroom door opens. A soldier of Niflheim glances in, and Lunafreya does her best to slow her breathing to something normal. The soldier looks around, but she is alone aside from her dogs. After a moment, the soldier leaves, closing the door once again.

Lunafreya moves to her bureau with long strides. Her hands aren’t shaking anymore when she opens the notebook she and Noctis share. 

_ It’s come time for me to leave Tenebrae _ , she writes.

There is more she wants to say, so much more. But, at long last, she fears she doesn’t have the time.

-

“I’ve left the rear gate open,” Maria whispers as Lunafreya hurries down the stairs, suitcase in hand.

“Thank you.”

Maria takes Lunafreya’s hand in both of hers. She had always been more familiar than most, but Luna supposed that had to do with being the one to change her diapers as a child. Then she asks, “Must you go?” 

There are so many answers to that question, though all of them begin with “yes”. Lunafreya nods and opens her mouth to reassure her, but the sound of a nearby door unlocking draws both their attention.

“Then go quickly,” says Maria, hurriedly shooing her along, but not quickly enough. The door opens.

A platoon of MTs pours through, guns trained on them both, though Lunafreya knows they will not shoot her. And, striding in behind them - 

“I do not recall granting you permission to leave your quarters, Lunafreya.”

She steps back as though struck. “Ravus -?”

But whatever she might have said, however she could have expressed to him her complete astonishment and dismay, Ravus clearly doesn’t want to hear it.

She can’t even fight him when he escorts her back to her bedroom with a hand–normally so gentle with her–grasping her upper arm almost tight enough to hurt. She had been sure,  _ so _ sure, that Ravus would never do this.

Yet here Ravus is. Doing this.

“You are not to leave this room again until the journey to Lucis,” he says. “It is for your own good.”

Lunafreya wants to cry. “My own good?” she says, so softly that she isn’t sure he heard her. She whips her head around. “What is truly going on here? What cause does the Empire have to see me wed to Noctis?”

“They have offered a peace,” he says, in a mild, political tone that he has  _ never _ used before with her. Not once. “Your marriage is the olive branch.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

“What you believe does not concern me. What  _ does _ concern me is you sneaking off to go tell our mother’s killer about some plot you’ve dreamt up.” 

Lunafreya can only stare. 

This is  _ Ravus _ . Her beloved older brother who read her bedtime stories and made excuses so she could go climb trees. Who taught her advanced courses in geography and diplomacy simply because she wanted to know. The one who always supported her, always encouraged her… is locking her in her room.

Ravus’s face is unreadable as he turns to leave.

_ ‘Our mother’s killer _ , _ ’ _ Lunafreya thinks.  _ Does he truly hate Regis that much for leaving us? _

“You are wrong to hate King Regis,” she says, in a voice that shakes - though with sorrow or anger, she cannot be sure. “Niflheim killed mother, not him.”

Her only answer is the door clicking quietly shut.

“They murdered her,” she whispers to an empty room, “and made you their lapdog.”

Lunafreya grieves all over again.

-

She is about ten seconds away from attempting to find out whether Umbra can transport something bigger than a notebook, when thumps and more than a couple crashes sound outside her door. Lunafreya stares at it, surprised and very slightly alarmed, as two more flat  _ thuds _ sound, followed by shuffling footsteps.

The ‘click’ of her door unlocking and swinging gently open has her staring in unabashed surprise at her new visitor.

“Hi! Are you Princess Lunafreya?” 

It is a boy that  _ cannot _ be any more than seventeen, and that is being generous. He stands just outside her door, and behind him, slumped on the ground, are the platoon of magitek soldiers set as her captors.

Lunafreya is, for perhaps the first time in her life, completely dumbfounded. “I… Yes,” she manages. “I am.”

The boy bows a greeting, and rises up. His eyes are a bright, bright blue. “Nice to meet you! I’m Sora,” he says, pointing at himself. “Crowe had to leave, so she sent me to come get you instead.”

“Crowe…?” Lunafreya’s mind turns. Noctis had mentioned someone by that name, and a few others, when he had been training with the Kingsglaive a few years back. Wasn’t she one of the mages in the Glaive?

She remembers the crow who delivered most of the notes, and the way the paper burned unnatural colors as if by magic.

“Yeah!” Sora says, undeterred. “She said to meet you on the Sylvan Bridge, but you didn’t show, so I thought I’d come find you.”

An alarm blares through the once-peaceful hallways of the manor, one of the first installations to happen after Niflheim’s invasion, and Sora scratches the back of his head sheepishly.

“Time to go,” he chirps, holding out his hand in invitation. “My entrance wasn’t quiet.” 

Lunafreya makes a decision. Moving quickly, she grabs her notebook and kneels to secure it in Umbra’s harness. “Go,” she whispers to him with a final stroke through her dog’s thick fur. Doing the same for Pryna, she adds, “You as well.”

Both of them nuzzle fondly into her hands, then lope past Sora through the open door. Then Lunafreya turns to Sora herself. She can hear footsteps drawing closer, but forces the fear down.

“My life is in your hands,” she says simply, and offers her own hand in return.

He takes it with a grin, and motions for her to follow down the hall at a run.

-

It’s a route she knows well - down the spiral staircase, past the teak sitting room to the outdoor catwalk, then back in just behind the grand staircase at the entrance. But through they’ve taken care to mask their trail, there are only so many exits to this part of Fenestala Manor, and with the alarm blaring, there are already guards ready at every single one of them. 

Sniper rifles are pointed at them as soon as they step into view. Sora’s weapon materializes in his hand in much the same manner as Lucian magic, which is surprising enough on its own. More remarkable still is that Lunafreya  _ recognizes _ the strange weapon in his hand, but she has little time to contemplate that before Ravus steps into view.

“Lunafreya,” he says, voice low and warning. “Come back here at once, and this needn’t escalate any further than it already has.”

On any other day, Lunafreya would have thought that Ravus was scared too. Now she is not so sure. But his eyes flick upward toward the balcony in that way he always has, trying to tell her something without saying it, so she looks.

There are more soldiers above them, rather more than she anticipated. Not only the magitek snipers, but a handful of ground units as well, their mechanical hands curled around the arms of a trembling woman, back bowed with age.

_ Maria _ , Lunafreya realizes with a jolt of clarity. Because of course an escape attempt would not go unpunished, not even with outside aid. It never has.

She needs to say something. Find some way to negotiate for the safety of her retainer.

“H-help me,” is what comes out of her mouth instead.

It’s soft and more hesitant than she intended, but everyone stops what they’re doing and  _ stares _ at her all the same. 

“This man is a kidnapper,” she says, pointing to the flagrantly  _ young _ teenage boy behind her and praying he understands. “You must stop him.”

She can see Sora gaping at her out of the corner of her eye, but doesn’t dare turn toward him. After an agonizing moment, he follows her gaze up to the balcony. 

“Uh - Yeah!” he says. Then he pitches his voice lower and points his keyblade in the vague direction of her neck. “Yeah. Nobody make a move or the princess gets it!”

It’s the worst villain imitation Lunafreya has ever heard. 

Somehow it works, if by shock value alone. Or maybe the life of the Oracle really is too precious to risk without a ready replacement in line, even to an obvious bluff. Whatever it is, she’ll take it. Maria is out of view now, the MTs who held her having released their grip. She is as safe as Lunafreya can make her.

She reaches blindly backward until she feels Sora grasp her - by the wrist this time, for added performance. Then Lunafreya allows herself to be pulled along with as little faux-struggling as she can manage.

-

They keep going past the servants’ quarters north of the rotunda, through the dusty passageway behind the tapestry of the Lucian Oracle King, then down the staircase to the rear gardens. It’s the tapestry that reminds Lunafreya - she doesn’t have her trident, it’s been locked away since her ascension,  _ she can’t perform the Rites without it. _

Her footsteps slow, and Sora looks back at her. The alarm is quieter in this part of the manor, muffled by cobwebs and years of dust, but they can still hear the clanking armored footsteps still chasing them down.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Sora asks, still pulling her along, though slower now.

Lunafreya doesn’t know what to do. She’s made this choice before. But today, for the first time, she wonders if it was the wrong one. 

The MTs draw nearer. A rifle goes off, either a misfire or a warning shot, and the bullet ricochets off the stone walls of the tunnel, startlingly close by. She can hear Ravus calling her name. His voice is echoing and directionless, or maybe just her memory. Noctis sounded rather the same, the last time she heard his voice.

Sora’s keyblade is still in his hand. He points it at the tunnel behind them and mutters something, and then the gap is filled with thick spikes of clear ice, an instant wall of cold.

Not a moment too soon. Magitek axemen arrive just beyond and begin hammering away at it. She doesn’t see Ravus with them. The tunnel is narrow, so he could just be out of sight, but -

Sora does…  _ something _ , with his keyblade. Lunafreya doesn’t see exactly what, only a flash of light in the corner of her vision. The section of wall where he is pointing his weapon still bears a glimmering outline in the shape of a doorway. And the wall, which Luna previously thought was solid stone, opens outward.

Beyond, there is daylight.

“There was never a door there before,” Lunafreya feels compelled to point out.

Sora shrugs. “Yeah, that happens to me sometimes. Ready to get out of here?”

She is. She’s so  _ past _ ready it hurts. But it's not fair that the only way for her to chase her calling always seems to be by leaving something,  _ someone _ , behind. 

And,  _ gods _ , she's too old now to complain about what is fair. Nothing has been fair or right or just since she was twelve years old. All that ever remained since that day was the path to making it better.

Lunafreya looks back one more time. She still can't see Ravus past the MTs hacking at the ice blocking their path, but she can't stay any longer. She's put off this goodbye for too long already.

The wheels are in motion. Noctis is waiting for her. The trident will find its own way to her if the gods will it, and Ravus…

She can only hope they'll find each other again, before the end.

Sora is looking at her, waiting on her word. 

Steeling herself, Lunafreya nods.

He grins at her, irrepressible in the darkness, and gestures to the door. “Right this way, princess!”

\---

“Right this way, princess,” Riku says with a bit of a bow.

Kairi rolls her eyes at him as she boards the gummi ship ahead of him, and Riku can’t help the crooked grin that forms on his face.

“Are you sure about this?” she asks him he settles into the pilot’s seat and begins set-up. “He hasn’t been gone  _ that _ long, not yet.”

“Long enough for you and Lea to be basically done with training,” Riku retorts. He flicks a line of switches in the upward position, then hunts around the side of his seat for a lever.

Kairi furrows her brow, watching him in perplexity. He really needs to teach her how to fly this thing one of these days. “Yeah, but. You know Sora. He probably just fell asleep somewhere.”

Riku stills, then gives her an unamused look.

She smiles sheepishly. “Too soon?”

“At this point I don’t know if it’ll ever  _ not _ be too soon. The kid is ridiculous.”

Kairi laughs and heads over to the passenger seat, resting her hand on Riku’s shoulder and letting it slide off as she passed. 

He tinkers a moment longer, then grips the steering wheel. “Alright,” he says, looking at her. “Heading?”

Kairi bows her head. It’s no secret that her heart was once deeply entangled with Sora’s, and stayed that way so long that returning to her own body felt like leaving something behind. All through the year Sora was missing, something  _ pulled _ at her, reminding her of what was gone even when everyone’s memories were tampered with by Naminé.

Naminé is a part of her now, but she’s part of Sora too. That’s why she has the power over him that she does. That part of Sora within her now tugs her still - not painfully, as his absence had in the past, but reassuringly. 

She glances at Riku, smiling a bit. He’s worried, but it’s his nature to worry. Kairi, on the other hand, isn’t worried at all. She knows they’ll be alright.

After all, the first thing they had done when they arrived home -  _ together at last! _ \- was share a paopu fruit between the three of them.

Kairi feels a gentle pulse somewhere in her chest, faint but constant. Another heartbeat beside her own.

“That way,” she says, pointing to a distant star.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Insomnia Falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year and good riddance to 2018! Let's kick this year off with a bang. And by "bang" I mostly mean wanton fictional destruction.
> 
> Next time you hear from us, KH3 will be in our hands! Then we can _really_ get this party started. :D

About halfway through Leide, outside a dusty motel in Longwythe outpost, the soft padding of four paws approaching makes Noctis turn.

“Umbra!” he exclaims with a smile. Umbra sits obediently at the prince’s feet, and Noctis kneels down to give an affectionate rub to the dog’s dark head.

Prompto positively melts, of course. “Bringin’ us stuff!  _ Atta boy~! _ ” he coos.

“That dog can really track a scent,” Gladio remarks.

“Certainly  _ nose _ how to find us,” Ignis adds, smirking. Noctis wonders briefly if the pun was deliberate… and then rolls his eyes, because of course it was.

Prompto seems to have missed it though, because he crouches down to pet the dog as well. “How  _ do _ you always know, boy?”

Noctis waves his friend away for some privacy. “Just a sec,” he mutters, and eagerly fiddles with the catch on Umbra’s satchel until it opens, and Luna’s notebook slides gently out.

He flips through pages and pages of letters, stickers, pressed flowers, and little drawings. Later entries also include photographs, book quotes and recommendations, and one recipe he had begged Ignis to write down because he knew Luna would  _ love _ it. One notable page still has specks of glitter caught in the crevice of the page bindings, remnants of an ill-fated prank that neither of them wanted to repeat but that Noctis had laughed about for days. 

In return, Luna would send him stories of people she had healed, places she had visited, both grand and impoverished. She enclosed samples of herbal tea for him to try, snippets of local folktales and legends, and, once, a spool of hair-thin mythril wire stronger than any fishing line he’d seen before or since. It took  _ years _ before the thing snapped, and when it finally did, Noctis braided the remainder into a bracelet he still wears.

Luna had been so shy about asking to keep contact, back when they were kids, but for Noctis, a delivery from Umbra is always the highlight of his week.

The last written page, when he finds it, is unusually short - just a sticker of a figure surrounded by sylleblossoms, and a note. 

_ The time has come for me to leave Tenebrae. _

Only that one sentence. Weird. But it’s still Luna’s tiny, slanted handwriting, and there’s nothing else on the page to give him any clues. Maybe she just wants to save her latest news for when they meet in Altissia?

That’s probably it. Noctis honestly feels the same way. The thought of being face-to-face with Luna again - to be able see her, touch her, hear her voice - fills him with a barely-contained excitement that he can’t really put a name to. 

_ Finally going to see you after all these years! _ he writes in reply, and just for fun he tucks in a postcard he snagged from the motel’s front desk. Longwythe Peak is almost as impressive as the floating mountains in Tenebrae, and he thinks she’d enjoy the sight.

He closes the book and tucks it away, and Umbra leans up to wash his face affectionately before trotting away.

Noctis stands, and sees Prompto looking suspiciously mischievous. Or maybe just nosey. 

“I know, you’re not gonna tell me -”

“Then don’t ask,” Noctis interjects warningly.

Prompto is heedless, and his tone is teasing. “What was that about?” 

Noctis sighs. Loudly.

“You don’t say,” says Prompto.

Gladio ambles into his field of vision. “If we’re all done here, we’d better get moving.”

“Indeed,” says Ignis, reaching for the Regalia’s driver-side door. “At our current pace, we should reach Galdin Quay before nightfall.”

\---

At her current pace, Crowe will never reach Insomnia in time. The motorcycle’s throttle is wide open, and she’s already come far too close to becoming a skid-mark on hot pavement, but she only guns it harder.

When she made port back at Cape Shawe, an Imperial embargo closed in behind her. 

When she was speeding through Duscae and Leide, previously abandoned Imperial bases were crawling with activity, and she could see more blockades being set up on all major roads west across the Malacchai Hills. 

When she made it in range of Insomnia’s radio network, nothing answered her but jamming signals and static.

The sun is setting. With nothing left to lose, Crowe shrieks to a stop at Hammerhead station and lets her bike clatter to the pavement, forgotten, as she makes for the garage at a run.

The first person she sees happens to have a phone out. Crowe plucks it right out of their hands and dials a number she knows by heart.

_ “You’ve reached Nyx Ulric, leave a -” _

Crowe hangs up with a curse and tries someone else.

Libertus, thank all the gods, actually answers.  _ “Crowe? Why the hell are you calling my cell phone? You’re on a mission, you know damn well you can’t-” _

She cuts him off. “I already tried every other avenue Libs, so shut up and listen. The treaty’s a trap, and half the Glaive are in on it.”

_ “WHAT?” _

“Luche just tried to kill me, and Drautos gave the order.  _ Drautos is with Niflheim _ , Libertus, you have to stop the signing!”

Whoever belonged to the phone she stole is waving and talking at her. Crowe barely hears, and certainly doesn't care.

_ “The signing’s happening  _ **_now_ ** _ , and I’m posted halfway across town!” _ Libertus protests.

“Then fucking call someone who’s close enough!” Crowe all but shouts into the receiver. “Nyx isn't answering and I don't know who else I can -”

“Girl will you quit yer yammerin’ and let a man think!” says a completely different voice, gravelly with age. An old man has appeared behind Crowe alongside the woman she stole a phone from, and appears to be scrolling through the contacts of his own cell.

Crowe is all set to give the geezer a one-fingered salute and continue unimpeded in her efforts to  _ save an entire damn kingdom _ when the woman - a pretty blonde thing in a trucker’s hat - adds, “Paw-paw’s an old friend o’ King Regis, he thinks he might still have his private line saved.”

_ “- have Pelna’s number saved, d’you think he’s loyal?” _ Libertus is saying in the meantime.

Crowe jumps on the suggestion. “Yes! Luche didn't mention him! Is he stationed at the Citadel?”

Libertus is silent for a moment.  _ “Is Luche still with you?” _

“The short answer is no,” Crowe says, eventually.

The long answer is that, with a bit of persuasion, Luche had been very talkative. By the time she was finished he wasn't in a very fit state to travel, so using her wartime authority as a Glaive, Crowe convicted Sir Luche Lazarus of high treason, and delivered the accompanying sentence.

But Libertus doesn’t need to know all that, and doesn’t ask. He and Luche had been… close.

“Ha!” says the old man. “Found it!”

Crowe is out of patience. “Libs, just call whoever you think isn't traitor, warn -”

_ “Holy shit,” _ comes Libertus’ soft voice through the speaker.

A split-second later, on the horizon to the northeast, there is a towering flash of red-violet light, and a sound like rolling thunder.

The blonde woman gasps. The old man curses. Various other civilians Crowe hadn't bothered to notice begin to shout and panic, because they know exactly where that explosion came from.

“Just get to the Citadel,” she hisses. “I’m on my way.”

\---

Gummi ships can be particular about where on a world they land. Generally speaking, somewhere near a hub of civilization but far enough out of the way not to cause a ruckus is ideal. But for wielders of the keyblade, circumstances often conspire to make their entrances… less than quiet.

They pop out from the quiet of space into  _ sheer chaos. _ The ship still has altitude, but it doesn’t matter much with the other ships in their airspace and the skyscrapers of the sprawling city beneath them turning the sky into a giant maze of steel and sunlight-reflecting crash hazards. Riku grits his teeth when another airship clips the shuttle and sends them into a rough spin. He  _ just _ gets it under control in time to drop into a square, barely not squishing any civilians. 

He turns toward Kairi, who is gripping the arms of her seat so tightly her knuckles show white. 

“What in the hell is Sora doing  _ here? _ ” he asks, in a voice that tries not to sound accusatory but doesn’t quite manage.

Kairi just gives him a  _ look _ and gestures broadly to the fighting outside their shuttle’s bow window - all the people in need of protection. “Take a wild guess.”

Riku huffs a sigh, then turns off the engines and rushes for the ramp, jumping out when it isn’t fast enough to lower to the ground. Kairi follows on his heels.

They got a glimpse of the chaos on the ground before, but there’s really nothing like being in the thick of it. Civilians are running  _ everywhere _ , screaming, some carrying a few sparse items in their hands as they desperately flee the city. Riku looks up, his back to the gummi ship, and airship after airship is streaming through the city, some firing on skyscrapers indiscriminately, sending debris hurtling to the ground. A number of them open up at the back, dropping…  _ something _ into the city below. Gunshots can be heard immediately after, and the civilians somehow move  _ faster _ , a number of them falling to the ground in their haste. Rhythmic clanking follows the gunshots, coming closer, steel boots.

What the  _ hell _ is going on in this world?

He summons his keyblade the second he sees the first explosion at eye-height, redirecting a stray bullet into a wall.

Figures in black with a military look to them spread out and cover the people’s exit, a defined line between civilians and danger. Beyond them are rows and rows of metal soldiers stomping in formation, rifles in their hands, each ‘pop’ a bullet being shot. 

They’re indiscriminate, hailing fire on the figures in black and non-combatants alike. But there aren’t nearly enough protectors for the sheer  _ mass _ of people pouring through the streets. Off to their right, someone  _ screams _ -

A hexagonal Barrier spell flickers into place between a small fleeing family and a storm of bullets. Riku sees Kairi staring at them, keyblade raised and face pale. She looks at him, and it’s not a question but he nods anyway.

“You play defense, I’ll thin down the ranks a bit,” he mutters, just loud enough for her to hear, and leaps into the fray, just past the line of figures in black. 

The metal soldiers are slow and clumsy, and don’t do well with surprise. A low-powered fira is enough to cover his landing in the midst of them, and his keyblade has gone through three of them before the rest even realize he’s there. He expects the hits, when he lands them, to be hard, jarring, metal-on-metal. But the soldiers only tip over and crumple under his keyblade - just like the heartless do, Riku notes, down to the faint black smoke trickling out of the cracks in their armor. He half-expects to see a crystalline pink heart flutter into the sky, but there’s nothing. Whatever these things are, they’re empty inside.

Makes it easier, he supposes, and sets to work.

Numbers had been their only advantage against the figures in black, and as Riku easily mows them down, the others are able to move in from the defense and start to clear the area. He keeps Kairi within sight on his left, and tries to give her as few reasons to deflect attacks as possible. Redirecting bullets turns the empty soldiers’ only weapon against them, something he and Sora had begun to perfect after The World That Never Was.

Xigbar was, and forever  _ would _ be, a dick. Currently a  _ possessed _ dick, but still. 

Riku can hear more stomps coming, moreso  _ smell _ them, and he grits his teeth. They smell like heartless do, too, slippery and faintly rotted. But the defenders in black uniforms -  _ Are _ those uniforms? he wonders - have pressed the advantage from the space Riku managed to give them, and are holding their own.

He glances at Kairi, keyblade held in his blind spot. She is helping another girl her age support an elderly man between them. They pass the elder to another man when Kairi spots him looking, and she nods at him again. They can meet up later. 

Riku gives the surrounding area one last once-over, then starts to run off deeper into the city. A few of the black-clad guards shout warnings at him as he passes, which he of course ignores. 

Riku never claimed to be all that smart, whatever Sora thought of him.

It doesn’t take him long to find another battalion of metal soldiers and he goes to town on them, using the nearby light poles and building walls to add momentum to his strikes. His spins give him extra power, slicing through a whole row of soldiers at once. 

One of the black-clad guards, a man in his forties with a katana nearly as long as Sephiroth’s, is taking on a mecha that’s maybe two stories tall and holding his own. Riku grins and arrows for it, coming down from above, spinning like a buzzsaw with his keyblade. Half the cockpit and more from the main body falls off as he lands daintily on top, keyblade pulled back in guard position. 

The guard stares at him. “The hell was  _ that _ ?” he asks blankly, and Riku grins just the littlest bit.

“Just evening the odds,” is all he says in reply. 

The guard touches his earpiece, listening. Whatever he hears, it makes him twitch, and he snarls back into thin air, eyes not coming off Riku. “Do  _ not _ rendezvous in block D, it’s a trap!” 

Another dropship lowers and opens its bay doors - another platoon of metal soldiers pour out, along with  _ two _ mechs and some writhing mess of a creature that  _ reeks _ of darkness. 

Riku immediately makes for the monster, infuses his keyblade with lightning and slams it to what looked like the center of the creature’s mass, then spinning away.

The guard with the katana cuts down the metal soldiers before Riku can even blink, and then focuses on the mechs. He touches his earpiece again. 

“Monica,” Riku hears him say urgently. “I’m pinned down. Send someone to meet with Glaive Ulric at block D, he has the r-” He cuts off, a pause. “Then find  _ someone _ , we cannot lose that ring!”

Riku considers. Block D, huh?

“Which way, old man?” he calls out.

Bright blue eyes lock onto his, and Riku sees a defeated sort of understanding there. Before he can read too much into it, one of the mechs crashes between them, and the man points. “Head north, above the highway. First intersection past the university.”

“Got it,” he nods, and leaps onto the nearest two-story building rooftop. Parkouring his way north is way faster. He hears a distant ‘dammit’ behind him.

He knows he’s in the right place when the  _ stench _ of darkness hits his nose like a freight train. The intersection is eerily empty except for two people. One is in a black hood reminiscent of the old Organization cloaks, aside from the silver face guard. The other, slightly taller, is in a similar black uniform, shaded with purple and bearing a gold and black pauldron on his right shoulder to signify rank. Riku balances on a lamp post just outside the intersection and watches.

The hooded figure goes to meet the one with the pauldron in the center of the intersection at a jog. He looks relaxed and relieved when he gets there, to judge by the set of his shoulders, and opens his hand to reveal something inside it.

Whatever it is, Riku can’t see it from where he is, when the taller figure takes it from the other and examines it. Something small, plain, and very dark.

And that’s about all Riku has time to think before his brain registers that the one with the pauldron has stabbed the figure in the hood hard in the gut.

Riku is down there before he knows what he’s doing. He  _ throws _ his keyblade with a shout, watches as it spins and knocks the surprised attacker away, then runs for the one in the hood. There’s a hi-potion already in his hands; he dumps it over the injured man before he even fully stops, and lifts his keyblade in a guard.

The attacker, already upright and advancing, looks Riku over, taking in his black vest and grey pants. “Crownsguard taking kids now?” he asks evenly, “Or are you just playing dress up?”

“Consider me a neutral party,” Riku says, nose wrinkling with disgust. “And don’t even pretend we’re on the same side - I can  _ smell _ the darkness coming off you.”

Behind Riku, the one in the black hood gulps down air as his wound closes, and lurches to his feet. “Drautos,” he croaks. “What-?”

The attacker -  _ Drautos _ \- casually wipes his dagger on a pant leg and sheaths it, then draws a broadsword almost as long as Riku is tall. “You should have stayed down, Nyx,” he calls over to them. “It would’ve been a lot easier if I didn’t have to chase you all this way.”

“The hell you talking about,” Nyx presses, stepping forward. His hood slips off, and his face is pale. “You set the rendezvous point, so we could get the ring out of the -” 

Drautos holds up something small and dark in his hand - the object they had exchanged, back when Nyx thought he was meeting with an ally - and Nyx’s voice stills. 

“I  _ am _ taking the Ring of the Lucii out of the city,” Drautos says. “But I’m not handing it over to the son of a so-called king who left his entire kingdom for dead.”

Nyx goes sheet-white. “You went in with the Empire?” he whispers. “Niflheim’s the one who destroyed your home, not Lucis!”

“I do not blame Niflheim for taking what was given,” Drautos says softly. “I blame the man who gave it. Nationality and lines in the sand make no difference - the only thing we fight for at the end of the day is our homes.”

“Yeah?” Nyx says, a kukri in his hand. “Well, watch me fight for mine.”

Nyx  _ lunges _ at Drautos, swiping at the other man with a desperation and determination Riku has never seen before. 

The blow doesn’t even connect. Nyx’s blade glances with a clang off armor that has materialized around Drautos - all spikes and brushed titanium, metal dripping liquid black. Drautos hefts that giant sword before Nyx can rebalance, swings -

Riku launches a thundaga from his palm that sends the armored figure crashing backwards; the steel lamp post that stops him snaps clean in half from the impact.

Nyx stares at the damage, then at Riku. “Okay,” he says, sounding halfway offended. “Who  _ actually _ the hell are you?”

“Riku,” he replies.

Nyx looks like he wants to say something else, but the sound of Drautos getting up again doesn’t give him much time to consider. Instead he turns back to Drautos with a snarl. 

“All this time!” Nyx yells, furious. “ _ All _ this time, Titus Drautos and General Glauca were the same  _ fucking _ person. You’re  _ worse _ than a traitor; a traitor would first be loyal!”

“Stand down, Glaive Ulric!” Glauca commands, advancing on them with his sword raised. His voice is distorted behind the armor’s face plate, almost demonic.

Nyx and Riku exchange a glance. Riku lifts his keyblade. Nyx drops into his own stance, a kukri in each hand.

“You don’t get to call me that,” Nyx says. “You’re not my captain.”

Glauca makes the first move, roaring and swinging his sword towards the both of them. Nyx rolls away but Riku doesn’t even let him get close, blasting him with a triple firaga in quick succession, using the opportunity to get airborne again and rain down a flurry of strikes at his head. 

Glauca blocks most of them but flinches when he finds Nyx at his side, kukri six inches past his armor. Nyx grins and yanks it back out again, and Riku covers his movement with multiple strike raids zipping past Glauca’s head.

The armor tanks most of the damage. Riku bounces away, taunting Glauca with his mobility, only to be surprised when Glauca matches him for speed and catches him in the side. He goes slamming into a support pillar, and has to take a potion to brush off the damage. 

He barely sees Nyx zoom past, low and silent, around the perimeter of the intersection. With sudden realization, Riku lunges at Glauca, headlong and full frontal, drawing as much attention to himself as he can.

While Glauca’s eyes are on Riku, Nyx is somehow in the air behind him, and lands on the general’s shoulders rather to everyone’s surprise. Glauca tries to shake him off, but the armor - while strong - is confining. Riku slides in low to sweep out Glauca’s legs, and Nyx drives his blade  _ deep _ into a gap in the armor near his right shoulder.

Glauca’s arm goes slack - the tendon cut, or maybe a nerve - and he drops his sword with a clatter. 

The world  _ rumbles _ . Nyx falls from his perch - attempts to pin down Glauca’s opposite hand, the hand still clutching the ring they’re both after, but doesn’t quite manage. In the distance a building comes down with a heart-stopping roar. Riku looks up from the duel, and for a moment forgets to breathe, because that building didn’t collapse on its own, or from continued airship blasts above the city.

It went down because it broke the fall of the biggest monster Riku has ever seen.

Holy  _ shit _ , the thing’s size puts even a Twilight Thorn or a Darkside to shame. It towers above most skyscrapers and matches the others, wrapping impossibly long tentacles around them to move around, pulling them down after it. Even the fleet of airships that apparently lifted it in aren’t immune, as two of them get knocked clean out of the sky. Riku squints, and he can just see the edge of a glowing red center - a weak point?

Then Glauca’s in his face again, sword and ring somehow both held in his left hand, and Riku has more immediate things to worry about. He parries and dodges the strike, chucking a gravira spell at Glauca to give himself some space, and then Nyx is on him again, probably looking to disable his other arm.

Above them, one of the airships that brought in the monster turns from its path and draws near, its engines a roar in Riku’s ears. Nyx is still jabbing at Glauca anywhere he can, but the airship lowers almost to the ground, and the wind of its entry presses both combatants down. 

Glauca doesn’t stay down for long; when the ship’s back hatch opens, the general throws Nyx to the ground, then drops his own sword and leaps for the open bay door.

“No!” Nyx shouts, and from the ground reflexively throws a kukri toward the ship. It lands point first and several inches deep into the ship’s stern, and… nothing else happens.

Nyx swears. Riku, unsure what Nyx was trying to do and pretty thoroughly annoyed at this Glauca person already, leaps after the rising airship. It’s still too far, so Riku launches himself forward and leaps again off the empty air, arm extended -

The cargo bay door closes on Glauca’s unmasked, scowling face, and Riku tumbles to the ground.

He lands in a roll, breathing hard, while Nyx swears up a storm from somewhere nearby. The ship is just another dot in the sky now, leaving them alone in a destroyed city.

Well. Not really alone. There’s still the giant, multiple-mouthed tentacle monster to worry about.

“What the heck  _ is _ that thing?” he shouts at Nyx. 

“One very,  _ very _ big daemon. Niflheim manufactured,” he replies, voice grim. “They really mean to raze the city to the ground!”

Riku eyes it again. “I might be able to take it,” he mutters.

_ “WHAT?” _ Nyx shouts. “Kid, it’ll  _ flatten _ you.”

And the thing is, Riku doesn’t like to pick fights he doesn’t already know he can win. Sure, he’s faced creatures many times his own size before, but this thing makes the skyscrapers look like toys. But it's knocking them down like toys too, and there just isn't any leaving that unaddressed.

He eyes it again as Nyx catches his breath, spots enough platforms to use to get himself high enough, and downs an ether to refresh himself. 

“Kid, c’mon, we gotta--” 

Riku doesn’t stick around to hear what Nyx has to say, already leaping for his first platform. 

The monster doesn’t even notice him at first, which, well, makes sense, but is still grating. It  _ does _ notice him when he blasts a firaga to its face, followed up by blizzaga. It doesn’t look like they even made a scratch when the giant face slowly turns to him, and  _ roars _ . 

The shockwave of sound knocks off loosely hanging building debris and dust and sends it flying at him. His ears are still ringing from the shock when a tentacle comes from the side and it’s -

\- too big, too fast,  _ he can’t—! _

Riku’s next conscious thought is back down on the ground, draped over Nyx’s shoulder as he runs them both from the city.

“Shit, shit, c’mon kid don’t be dead, don’t be dead…”

Riku groans, and Nyx takes it as a good sign.

“Riku, holy  _ fuck _ you made it! Can you walk?”

“Uhng…” The sound that comes out of him isn’t quite words, and he tries to clear his throbbing head. The noise of continuing crashes and explosions definitely isn’t helping. “Maybe?”

“Yeah, how ‘bout no?” Nyx says, adjusting his weight. “We’re almost clear anyway. Just hang tight!”

Just as well, Riku thinks, because he’s not a hundred percent sure he can feel much below his neck. Which… is a thought that probably ought to worry him a lot more deeply than it is, but everything’s so fuzzy right now. What even  _ was _ that thing?

Experimentally, he flexes a hand, down where it dangles past Nyx’s back. It moves, and the brush of fabric against his fingertips is distant and staticky, but there. Just asleep, then. Not gone.

_ Hehehe _ . For some reason that thought strikes him as funny.

They’re far away from the monster now, past the huge stone walls that border the city, but Riku can still see it in the distance. Something on it  _ opens up _ and spills burning red light for  _ miles _ , devastation without even trying.

What's that thing gonna do when it runs out of buildings to destroy?

Nyx seems to have the same thought, because he starts running faster, and Riku abruptly realizes that they're already well past where he had left Kairi, that she's back there somewhere, too close to that thing and too far from him, no,  _ no no no  _ **_where’s Kairi_ ** _ - _

“Marshal!” Nyx yells, fighting to keep a violently struggling Riku from falling clean off his shoulder and injuring himself more. “Cor, a little help!”

They approach the tail end of the flocks of city residents fleeing south across the bridge. One man breaks off from the group, backtracks to meet them. It's the man with the katana.

“Ulric,” he says with restrained relief. Then he notices Riku. “You know this kid?”

Nyx frowns. “I thought he was one of yours?”

“ _ Riku! _ ”

Kairi’s voice reaches him, and he cranes his head enough to see her come running at them. Nyx sees her as well and, making the connection between them, puts Riku down, leaning him against the weathered stone of the Old Wall.

And then Kairi is  _ there _ , holding Riku’s hand, touching his face, peering with concern into his unfocused eyes.

He’s almost dizzy with relief.

“On your feet, kids,” says Cor, not unkindly. “We’re still much too close to the city.”

Something in Riku’s brain shifts gears with a click. They’re not done. With quite a bit more effort than it should have been, he conjures a potion to his hand and makes to drink it down.

Kairi slaps his hand away. “Riku, you’re concussed,” she says. “You can’t use a potion on that. Hold still.” She closes her eyes and furrows her brow in concentration, and the flower of a cure spell blooms over his head. It’s quite small still - she’s rather new at the spell after all - but it bursts into a shower of green all the same, and most of the fog lifts from around Riku’s mind.

Some of the numbness in his body goes away too, and Riku gets the distinct impression that it  _ won’t be fun _ when he can fully feel those cracked ribs later. His wrist is also out of alignment again, stupid thing.

“I’m okay,” he reassures Kairi with a wince, and uses the Wall at his back to brace himself up. “Are you -” He pauses as something else registers. “Why are there two of you?”

“Not the most reassuring thing you could have said!” says one of the Kairis, at the same time as the other one says, “Hi, I’m Iris.”

“The  _ bridge! _ ” someone shouts, and a split-second later the shockwave of an explosion blows past them. Riku is almost knocked flat all over again, but Kairi braces him, expression grim.

A soldier reports to Cor, “Sir, the bridge across the bay was just demolished by Imperial fire!”

“But that’s where everyone’s running to,” Iris whispers, sheet-white. “They’ll all… Do they really just want to kill everyone?”

For a horrifying moment, Riku wonders if maybe they shouldn’t stay here. He’s been to dangerous worlds, he’s been to war zones, but never places where people were just - slaughtered. 

Then the moment passes, and fury settles in to take its place.

He lurches upright. “Isn’t there another bridge further north?” He vaguely remembers that from when they were in the air.

“The Nifs will have taken that out too before we get there,” says Cor. “Our only chance now is by boat.”

“I’ll handle it,” Nyx says. “But they’ll be sitting ducks in the water.”

Cor grimaces. “I never said it was a  _ good _ chance.”

Riku grits his teeth and fights against what’s left of the pain. Kairi gives him a  _ look _ , knows exactly where his brain is headed, again, but doesn’t tell him no because she’s right there with him. 

The airships all over the place are child’s play compared to the thing taking out half the city in two steps, anyway.

“We can give you cover to get the boats going,” he says, Kairi standing tall next to him, facing multiple incredulous expressions.

Nyx all but slaps his face in exasperation. “Kid, I pulled you away from a skyscraper-sized daemon. Your ability to judge what you can take on needs adjustment.”

“I survived it, didn’t I?”

Kairi snorts softly. “Not of your own accord.”

He pouts the  _ littlest _ bit at her. “What can I say? I pissed it off!”

“That’s not hard for you!”

Cor pinches the bridge of his nose. “Nyx, get those boats ready. We’ll corral civilians your way.” he commands, already turning away to give new orders to whoever is over his comm. “Dustin, meet us at the southern checkpoint. You’re to escort Lady Iris through the first available evacuation route.”

“But -” Iris protests.

“No arguments, Iris. I owe your father that much.” Cor says. Then, when he sees Nyx hasn’t moved, adds, “Do I need to repeat myself, Ulric? Go!”

Nyx swallows and vanishes into the crumbling city, off to wherever a large amount of boats could be grabbed at a moment’s notice. Riku honestly has no idea, but if Nyx said he could do it, Riku is inclined to believe him.

“Riku, Kairi, was it?”

Cor’s stopped speaking into his comm and turned back toward them. They both nod.

He looks them over, frowning. Finally, in a voice that makes them both stand a little straighter, he says, “Is it your intention to protect the people of Insomnia and save as many lives as possible?”

“Yes sir,” they both say, firmly.

He nods at them. “Then do whatever you can.”

\---

_ Above... _

“That went well,” he hums, watching Insomnia burn and fall to the ground on a viewscreen, his dreadnaught a good distance from the chaos. “Gotten away with our prize and nary a scratch.”

“Were you afraid of any other outcome, Iedolas?” Izunia drawls, leaning against a bulkhead, arms crossed. “I’m hurt, truly.”

“You never can know, with the Lucians. Held up against us  _ much _ longer than was wise,” he sighs, shaking his head. “So much wasted. No matter. It is all but over now. Where  _ is _ Glauca? He should have my Ring.”

“His dropship docked not long ago. He should arrive momentarily,” the Chancellor informs him, and he waves it off, settling into his impatience. All things in due time, after all. 

When Glauca finally arrives, he  _ limps _ in, one arm hanging loosely against his side, his left pressed against a wound on his hip.

Glauca bows as much as his wounds allow him.

“You encountered resistance, High Commander?” he asks, confused. With the King of Lucis dead, there would be no one with access to magic, and therefore no challenge.

“Glaive Ulric, and a…  _ child, _ ” Glauca sneers, one hand clenching. “With magic.”

Izunia sits up and takes notice, but says nothing.

He frowns. “Troubling. But, no matter. The Ring?”

Glauca pulls his hand away from his hip and extends his fist. “The Ring, your Imperial Majesty,” he says, and drops the artifact into the Emperor’s hand.

Iedolas always thought that the Ring of the Lucii would be staggeringly heavy for its size, a sign of the power and significance bound up in the deceptively small trinket. Instead it weighs nothing, a featherlight touch on his palm, and he closes his hand reflexively to be sure it’s even there. Its intricate edges are hard and bitingly cold.

To Glauca, he says, “Divide our forces among the Lucian bases to ensure compliance among the people. Insomnia should be enough of an  _ example _ to take the rest of the country with little bloodshed. My dreadnaught makes for Gralea.”

“At once, your Radiance.” Glauca bows again and exits the way he came.

Silence grows in the moments that follow, but for the steady hum of the dreadnaught’s engines. Iedolas feels the shape of the world change in these moments, with the Crystal and the Ring both under his command. How he longs to claim the power he fought for right here and now… but his victory will be more complete if he does so in Gralea, upon the emperor’s throne.

“Just how much of an  _ example _ do you intend to make, Iedolas?”

Izunia’s query is soft, spoken  _ just _ so. The Chancellor has always been overly familiar, just this side of insubordinate, but Aldercapt indulges him, as his advice has proven invaluable. 

He returns his gaze to the window. Diamond Weapon has flattened entire sectors and shows no signs of slowing. Not that Iedolas would know  _ how _ to stop it even if he wanted to. Besithia tends not to install off switches in his creations, and that suits the emperor just fine. It has always been his practice to release monsters upon his enemies and let the chips fall where they may. If they defeated the daemons, they were worthy of life in his empire. If they did not, then the daemons would continue until they found people who were.

Diamond Weapon will continue its rampage until it is stopped. That is the way of Niflheim.

“It is unfortunate,” he says, “but necessary. The Lucians will have  _ nothing _ to rebuild from, should the idea even cross their minds.”

“It seems such a dreadful waste of resources,” the Chancellor muses, “when all one need do is wait. Baser human instincts will assert themselves, and then it takes only a nudge to topple them into their own self-destruction.”

“Ever the proponent of scalpels, eh Izunia?” Iedolas says fondly. Then he looks once again at the weapon he now holds, more powerful than anything his scientists could dream of, perhaps exceeding even the might of the gods. What need has he of a throne, a center of power, when all the world is now his? “I prefer a hammer.”

He slips on the Ring, and time stands still.

The Emperor of Niflheim stands before the towering forms of the Lucii, and smiles.

“Kings of old,” he says, triumphant. “Rejoice, for your task is done! The gifts of the gods have been claimed by the true King of Light, and Eos shall evermore know peace.”

One figure steps forward - the smallest among them but no less resplendent in cloak and armor.  _ “What does Iedolas Aldercapt, conqueror of millions and destroyer of homes, know of peace?” _

He keeps his chin high. “Conflict is the way of this world. Peace is only possible under a singular rule.  _ My _ rule.”

Another one moves, slinking in and out of the mist, a star twirling idly in one hand.  _ “Eos will not be ruled by a common thief,” _ she says. 

_ “He calls himself Emperor,” _ says another, winged and shining too brightly to look directly at.  _ “But he only seeks to steal the birthright of another, along with the gifts of Bahamut. You are not our king.” _

_ “You are not our king…” _

_ “You are not our king…” _

_ “You are not our king…” _

The figures twist and move in the shadows, surrounding him, choking him with their presence and spinning away, but always drawing nearer. Heat builds, emanating from the Ring that itself is still colder than stone, and dark embers set his veins alight.

Iedolas clutches his burning hand and bites back the pain. “The god of war would surely anoint a chosen who  _ takes _ what is his!” he roars into the night. “The line of Lucis could not keep hold of its treasures, and so they will accept a new master by right of conquest!  _ That _ is the justice of this world, by mandate of Bahamut!”

The smallest of the Lucii grips him by the neck with a hand that  _ burns _ , and lifts him high. Iedolas kicks and struggles, but he cannot pry metal fingers away from his windpipe, and the fire only grows. It crawls up his limbs and pours down his throat, charing him from the inside in a slow crawl of blackened flesh. 

_ “I admit I would rather the Chosen’s burden fall to another,” _ says the youngest king, whisper soft even as his gauntlet squeezes the emperor’s throat.  _ “The line of Lucis has come to its prophesied end, but I know my son will do his duty, as will I. You, Iedolas Aldercapt, are the very last person who would do what Bahamut requires of us.” _

Iedolas looks back down at that impassive armored face. He cannot speak. He cannot breathe. 

He wonders, for just a moment, if this is what fear feels like.

_ “You said it yourself,” _ says the spirit of King Regis.  _ “The hand of justice must never lose its grip.” _

A ghostly sword plunges through the emperor’s chest, and he screams.

\--

When the last remnants of pale fire fade from the pile of ash that was once Iedolas Aldercapt, self-styled Emperor of Eos, the Chancellor of Niflheim steps in among the still-smoldering embers and lifts the Ring of the Lucii from the remains. He examines it curiously for a moment, casually blowing away what ash still clings to its surface, and  _ smiles _ .

“Well,” Ardyn drawls as he pockets the Ring. “That was easy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ryuu: I love how we set out write a fix-it fic and then immediately made everything worse.  
> Ryuu: #fix-it fic #of a sort  
> Isis: #fix-it fic on a wider scale #think big, bitches
> 
> Nyx and Cor watching Riku and Kairi performing magic. ‘Oh holy shit. Holy fuck. Who the hell are you. What are you. WHERE DID YOU COME FROM? Also we’re adopting you now. No buts.’
> 
>  
> 
> Isis: I wrote 95% of the combat in this chapter and I am _so damn proud_ of myself. Also, I hope ya’ll’ve seen Kingsglaive, because a lot of this chapter takes from that. The combat and sheer level of _destruction_ in that movie is not to be understated. Niflheim committed a war crime on a level we’re just now only really seeing in the real world in the middle east. _Yes_ I’m comparing it to that clusterfuck of epic proportions. There are cities there that have been there for _thousands_ of years that no longer exist, bombed into dust. Sometimes it’s hard for those of us in the US to really grasp the level of destruction. Kingsglaive is a good reflection of it.  
> ...In other words, we’re really driving things home.  
>  Also, Regis gets to go “Oh fuck you” and it’s glorious.
> 
> We’re at T-minus a month to KH3, and once we get our hands on that game we’ll be plotting and planning as much as we can. A lot of CAA for what we’ve planned has been on hold, or just ephemeral ideas because we have _no idea_ what this game is gonna throw at us. _Scala ad Caelum,_ btw? Had us both _screaming._


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, who decides from where up high?  
> I couldn't say I need more time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, my name is Tetsuya Nomura and I love all my children equally! Sora, Riku, and... -squints at smudged writing on hand- car key.
> 
>  _So at the conception of this fic, we didn't think we'd have to fix much, if anything in Kingdom Hearts, especially with the third game coming up. WE WERE WRONG. Now, admittedly, there isn't MUCH to fix. But what there is... GodDAMN it Nomura. You had ONE job. One! Fucking hell._ -Isis
> 
> Two months ago I was mad about Luna. This month I'm mad about Kairi. And I feel so conflicted for focusing on them because I FREAKING LOVE THESE GAMES. Just. Agh. But yeah, we had a fantastic time, and we're only just getting started. Also... VERUM REX? It's like they're baiting us or something. Like, us and this fic specifically. XD -Ryuu

Cor’s still trying to process the fact that some unknown fifteen year old girl just used healing magic right in front of him - magic unique to the Caelum and Fleuret dynasties, as far as anyone knows - when the the bridge everyone’s evacuating through is shot down.

It’s a bit of a whirlwind after that. Nyx hunts down Libertus Ostium from the wreckage of the city, and together they put out a distress signal to Galahd. There isn’t much support for Lucis remaining there, but civilians come through when they hear that Niflheim is targeting non-combatants. It takes a few hours for a few dozen privately-owned vessels to make it down from the archipelago to the north, and trying to keep the drop ships and missiles away for that long is an ugly affair, but eventually they do make land.

As promised, Iris and her retinue - consisting only of Dustin, the Amicitia family butler, and his grandson - are on the first boat bound for Leide, along with a few others. Only one ship in the miniature fleet actually makes it past the Imperial armada, and by some grace of the gods it’s hers. After that they send the boats in every direction  _ but _ Lucis, on the hunch that the Nifs won’t attack if the citizens are headed toward their own territory. For the most part, that hunch holds true.

The Crownsguard is dwindling, a few having been sent with each boat for what protection they could offer. But Niflheim’s forces are gradually turning away as well. Cor doesn’t flatter himself, he knows it’s no retreat. Insomnia is  _ gone _ , its walls demolished, its population decimated. The Empire has better things to do than chase after fleeing survivors. 

It’s a bit easier for the rest of them to sail to Leide after that. Crowe Altius hails them on the boat’s short-range radio as soon as they’re in sight of the shore. She debriefs them on what she learned in Tenebrae, and Nyx confirms that Drautos escaped with the Ring.

Everyone’s still a little bit shell-shocked over that. Nyx, though, is just angry. Cor is too, but it’s a duller sort of anger. He’d worked hand in hand with Titus Drautos countless times, traded tips and strategies, shared drinks with the man - and never once suspected.

His phone rings. Cor answers it on reflex but for a strange moment can’t bring himself to speak.

The voice on the other end speaks first instead. “H-hello? Cor?”

It’s Prince Noctis. Terrified and sounding on the edge of tears, but alive. Cor chokes on a sigh of relief. “So. You made it.”

“The  _ hell’s _ going on -?”

“Where are you?” he interrupts.

“Outside the city, with no way back in.”

The king had said,  _ Once you leave, you cannot turn back _ . “Makes sense,” Cor muses. Regis knew all along.

“‘ _ Makes sense’? _ Are you serious! What about ANY OF THIS makes sense?!” Noctis is shouting. Cor doesn’t blame him. “The news just told me I’m  _ dead _ , along with my father and Luna!” 

Cor frowns. Odd for the media, usually so impartial, to jump on baseless speculation as fact. Or had Noctis merely misheard? Then again it’s entirely possible for Nifs to want to control how the story is told, but what do they have to gain from the public thinking the Crown Prince and the Oracle to be dead?

This is all way too much to get into at once. “Listen,” he says. “I’m heading up to Hammerhead.” Noctis makes a frustrated huff, so before he can say anything else, Cor adds, “About the king… It’s true.”

The sound Noctis makes only twists the knife in Cor’s heart.

He closes his eyes and rubs the bridge of his nose. This isn’t fair to the kid, but then nothing ever was. As Regis was fond of saying, a king cannot lead by standing still. Noctis is the king now. He needs to get his ass in gear.

“If you’re looking for the whole truth,” Cor says softly, “you know where to find me. Get moving.”

“...Right,” says Noctis, eventually. He sounds like a man who’s been given a death sentence.

(He’s not wrong.)

Cor hangs up the phone and squashes the sudden, burning desire to just throw it in the fucking ocean.

\---

“Whatever happened with the Diamond Weapon?”

“The  _ what _ ?”

“Y’know, that huge fuckin’...  _ thing _ in daemon armor Besithia was working on for so long. What they wound up doing with those Sol remains Perpetouss troop brought back.”

“Wasn’t that supposed to be destroyed?”

“Nuthin’ destroys that thing…”

“‘S why they sent it to the invasion, ain’t it?”

“I thought they sent it in but it just kinda splatted on the ground without doing much.”

“I dunno, man, they tell different divisions all different stories and then wonder why we’re slow on the uptake.”

There is a bark of laughter in response, and Lunafreya cannot help but take what vicarious amusement she can, even if it comes from people she technically ought to hate. She leans against the thin sheet of metal separating her and Sora from the Imperial officers at ease in the mess hall on the other side, and imagines that she is among them. Among friends, or at least trusted comrades, where she could laugh easily and keep no secrets.

Wouldn’t that be nice.

“I can’t see Besithia letting go of  _ anything _ made of Solheim tech, to be honest.”

“Or anything daemon-infused. They like to keep that shit on lock.”

“Same. Like, if that thing was destroyed, the plasmodium index in the atmosphere would have gone through the roof. The scientists are a bit out of touch but even they wouldn’t risk that. They would’ve made it unstoppable first.”

“Maybe? I thought if we were able to get the Crystal the miasma count wouldn’t matter anymore.”

The room that she and Sora are holed up in isn’t a large one. More of a walk-in closet, really. Lunafreya doesn’t know exactly what Sir Altius paid the captain of this airship to smuggle them across the ocean, but whatever it was, it apparently didn’t cover a comfortable place to sleep.

Which is not to say that they hadn’t slept, of course. They had. Just awkwardly and, in Lunafreya’s case, unpleasantly lightly. The quietest bit of chatter wakes her from a doze without fail - unlike Sora, who is slumped easily in a corner even now. It’s sort of funny to watch him, actually. Lunafreya wonders if this is what Noctis looks like when he sleeps.

“I will bet you  _ money _ the thing just failed out of nowhere and -”

“And no one can agree who to pin the blame on so they’re just saying the Lucians did it!”

“If it even did actually drop?”

“I guess we’ll find out one way or another once we land at Aracheole Stronghold. Bet you can feel the rumbling of that thing walking from clear across Duscae, if it squashed a city that big.”

“That’s a lot of people dead, man.”

“The king and prince among them. Still kinda can't believe -”

Lunafreya hears nothing else over the gasp she bites back with both hands. It takes a full ten seconds before she quite convinces herself that, no, Noctis can’t be dead, she would know if he were dead, the  _ gods _ would know. But her shoulders still shake with the remains of a moment of blind terror. 

Whatever else went wrong in her life, whatever else was stolen from her, Lunafreya had always been secure in the knowledge that Noctis was  _ safe _ , wherever he was, and would continue to be so until he brought the prophecy of Light to completion.

It does not stop the tears from welling up in her eyes. She blinks them back so that they do not fall. They  _ will _ not fall.

“Hey, uh…” She jumps in place at a hand that lands softly on her elbow, and sees Sora peering at her with confusion and concern. Perhaps she had made some noise after all. “Are you okay?”

“Y-yes,” she manages, and hastily lowers her hands. They’re still shaking a tad, so she disguises the motion by smoothing her skirts around her knees. “My apologies for waking you.”

“It’s alright,” he shrugs, and then shuffles around in the tight spot as quietly as he can until their shoulders are touching. “You want a hug?”

Lunafreya blinks. “Oh. No, but thank you for the offer. You’re very kind, Sora.”

He smiles at her, and looks away briefly. “I have a couple friends that have a ship that runs on funny faces. So sometimes even if I was sad we would make faces at each other, and end up laughing, and then things would feel a  _ little _ bit better.”

She looks askance at him. “How can a ship be powered by… faces?”

“I dunno. It’s just what Donald told me. Sometimes I think he was fibbing, but it’s fun to make faces at him anyway, so I keep doing it.” And then he grins brightly at her. “Wanna try? Maybe it’ll make  _ this _ ship go faster!”

And… Lunafreya can’t tell quite what it is, but something about that artless expression, so devoid of anything but sincerity, puts her heart at ease.

\---

It’s midmorning when Cor pulls into Hammerhead with half a dozen Crownsguard, three Glaives, and two thoroughly exhausted kids - three if you count Lady Iris, though she arrived there a few hours ahead of them. She does her best to be accommodating and helpful, because there just isn’t time to stop.

Ostium is still coordinating boat routes for refugees over his phone while Altius pretends not to hover at his shoulder. Nyx looks like he badly wants to grill Riku and Kairi on the how and why of their abilities, but knows it isn’t the time after the morning they’ve had, so he fusses over them instead. Both of them seem annoyed at being fussed over, but lack the energy to protest. Monica confers with Jared and the rest of the guard and does her damnedest to consolidate their intel, sparse though it is.

Cor goes to talk to Cid.

“It’s the most total victory I can imagine,” he mutters, staring at the ceiling. “Insomnia is  _ gone _ , its population  _ decimated _ , its king and ruling council all  _ dead _ . They have the Crystal, they have the Ring, they have the entirety of Lucis. It’s over.”

Cid waves dismissively. “Ain’t nothin’ over til fools like you say it is. You said the prince got in touch with ya?”

Cor nods blankly.

“Long way to go, that one,” Cid growls. “But better’n nothin’. What else ya know?”

Cor lets out a long sigh and tries to pull his thoughts together. It’s been a hell of a day. “The Oracle never came to Insomnia. I don’t know why the news cycle is reporting her among the casualties.”

“She’s safe?”

“As far as Sir Altius knows. She chose to come back and try to warn us rather than complete the mission herself. No word out of Tenebrae as to the Oracle’s movements, but she definitely wasn’t at the signing ceremony as planned.”

Cid seems to consider this, and nods. “Alright then. What’s next?”

Cor stares. 

“Ya gotta move forward  _ somehow, _ boy. Insomnia migh’ be gone, but the people are still there. An’ yer duty’s still to the Crown as long as Prince Noctis is alive. What’s he gonna need?”

Cor sighs and rubs at his face. There aren’t many people left who knew him when he was a child - probably even fewer, now - but Cid’s the only one who never stopped treating him like one. He takes a breath. “To reclaim the capital he will require more force behind him than any king in recent history. Not just Royal Tombs, but the means to access them - location scouts, cleared roads, intel on Nif movements and noisy distractions to keep enemy eyes off of him. Time, I can give him. But manpower… there’s no one left.”

Not the Glaives, not the Crownsguard, certainly not the Shield. By all rights Gladiolus should be the one making these decisions, but he’s still far too young, and needs to remain at the Prince’s side regardless. That means it falls to Cor.

“Yeh could call on the Hunters to lend ya a hand,” Cid suggests.

Cor frowns. “Aren’t they a civilian force?”

“Yep. So what?”

“So they’re not  _ trained _ -”

“Son, I know you an’ Reggie both thought Lucis ended at the Wall, but out here in the rest o’ the kingdom we have, in fact, learned to fend for ourselves. Y’know, in the absence of any and all assistance from the body that claims t’be our government.”

Cor opens his mouth to protest, and finds that he can’t. Even if he could come up with something to say, any right he might have had to say it was gone with Insomnia.

“Are they loyal?” he says instead.

“They believe in country more’n king, but yes.”

Cor sighs. Point made. “Tell me how to find them.”

Cid lowers himself gingerly into his armchair with a tired sigh. “They got a base of operations over in Prairie Outpost. Their leader don’t leave Meldacio much anymore, but her son was recently seen ‘round these parts. I know the fella’, he’d give you all the support you need.”

“And he’ll be at Prairie as well?”

“If he ain’t, the ones there’ll find a way to get ‘im there quick.”

Cor considers. “And there are two Royal Tombs supposedly quite near there, down in Keycatrich Trench. It’d be efficient if nothing else…” He taps restlessly at the arm of his chair, trying to remember the location of more.

“Ain’t them tomb-things supposed t’be locked?” Cid asks.

Cor makes a wet sound that might once have been a laugh. “His Majesty gave me the key,” he says. “The day before the signing ceremony. Told me to  _ hold onto it _ for him. I thought -” His throat closes. He doesn’t know what he thought.

“ _ Damn _ , Reggie,” Cid whispers, rather succinctly.

It hits him then, just how much of a head start Regis had given them. How much he had to have planned for, or at least tried. The mission to extract the Oracle, sending the Prince and his entourage away, keeping the bulk of the Crownsguard at the perimeter of the city rather than guarding the Citadel for the signing…

All for Noctis. 

Cid must be thinking along the same lines, because he adds, “‘S probably a good thing for the Prince to be reported among the dead, all things considered. Elsewise people’d talk.”

Indeed. Regis already had a reputation for valuing the lives of Insomnians more than other Lucian citizens. To hear he had sacrificed even them for the safety of his son would be one morale blow too many. Still, he asks, “And what do you think?”

“Lucis got dealt a losin’ hand,” Cid waves off. “An’ for his  _ kid _ , I… I don’t blame him for that.”

Cor smiles, just a bit. “Good to see you still care, Mr. Hardhead Hammerskull.”

Cid snorts. “It was  _ Hammerproof Thickskull _ , and I think I still have that old thing.”

He can just vaguely picture the old hammer Regis stole from Cid and carved that nickname into, back when they were young and fearless. “You should give it to His Highness. I bet he’d get a kick out of it.”

“Yeah,” Cid says soberly. “I’ll let yeh know when I’m ready t’part with it.”

\--

Nyx ushers Riku and Kairi into the diner by their shoulders while Iris trails along anxiously behind them. All of them are walking zombies by this point with no energy whatsoever to protest the sudden nannying, so Nyx takes full advantage of that and sits them down in the quietest booth he can find. Kairi and Riku slump against one another, while Iris just lays her head on the table on the opposite side. Nyx grimaces a bit, then goes off to get some food off the cook. 

He still wants to grill the  _ crap _ out of them.  _ Magic. Kids. _ Magic only  _ two _ royal lines should have and while Riku has the hair and eyes of the Fleuret family he definitely doesn’t have the facial structure, and Kairi doesn’t look like  _ either _ of them. 

Takka drops a tray with three bowls of the day’s soup in front of him and he ferries it back to the booth. The smell of food is enough to wake the three from a slight doze - who, in the classic habit of all exhausted, starving teens, inhale their food with barely a ‘thanks’ to Nyx. He doesn’t mind. 

He’s fairly sure Riku saved his life back in Insomnia. Between that and the  _ scores _ of civilians he and Kairi helped defend last night, he’s willing to give them a  _ lot _ of leeway. 

Though he  _ very much _ wants to know who taught a couple of kids to fight like they’ve been on the front lines for years, and show them just how sharp his kukris are. And then introduce them to Cor. Between the two of them he’s sure there wouldn’t be enough left over for a matchbox. 

He drags a chair to their table, spins it around and sits, draping his arms over the backrest, only to drop his chin on top. It’s about as unthreatening as a guy his size gets. 

“Soooo… you two aren’t from Insomnia, are you?”

“Oh wow, really?” Iris picks her head up and blinks at her peers, curious. “I guess I just assumed. You don’t sound like you come from Leide though.”

Kairi fidgets with the handle of her spoon, biting her lip. Riku just gives him some kind of suspicious look, which - give him a break.

“Hey, it’s fine if you aren’t,” Nyx backpedals. “Neither am I. Me’n Libertus were born in Galahd.” At their blank looks, which he files away for later, he adds, “That’s an island chain to the north.”

Kairi smiles suddenly. “You’re an islander?”

“Born and raised,” Nyx grins. “I didn’t know Libertus back then, but my sister would always take me on her canoe through the marshes. She had an entire island where she would bury dumb trinkets in sealed bottles and pretend they were pirate treasure.” It wasn’t so much an island as a patch of scrub grass that turned into an ‘island’ at high tide, but still.

Nyx wonders, abruptly, how much of her stuff is still there, assuming that particular area survived the bombings.

“We’re islanders too. Though, from pretty far away,” Riku eventually says, scraping at the bottom of his bowl. And stiffens a second before Nyx spots someone in the corner of his eye.

“Crowe!” He jumps out of his seat only to get punched in the shoulder. “Hey!”

“I thought you were dead, you ass! Answer your phone every now and then,” Crowe huffs, and then finally hugs him. “I’m glad you made it out, hero.”

Her hug unwinds a  _ little _ bit of that tension from around the base of his spine.

Crowe then catches sight of the three teens in the booth, and stares. “Nyx, why are you babysitting the kids?”

“He’s not  _ babysitting _ us,” Kairi objects. “...we’re just a little tired.”

“They got every right to be after the shit they just pulled,” says Nyx, smiling crookedly.

“Needless heroics, huh? Sounds like your kind of people,” Crowe says as she flops into a chair of her own. 

“Hey! Even  _ I _ know when I’m outmatched, unlike the guy who leapt thirty feet in the air only to get smacked down  _ twice in a row _ ,” Nyx drawls, raising an eyebrow at Riku.

“How the heck do you do that twice?” Iris wonders aloud.

“Once with General Glauca and once with the Diamond Weapon.”

Riku rolls his eyes and slouches into the booth chair. “Can you stop?”

“I feel like this is a story I’d be a lot more interested in after I’ve slept for about twenty hours,” Iris mutters, head pillowed on her folded arms.

Crowe frowns. “Seriously, kid. I would’ve run the other way even  _ with _ magic. You’re not even a Glaive, and even if you were, the king’s dead. What were you thinking?”

“I was  _ thinking _ that lots of people were gonna die if I didn’t  _ do _ something.”

“Lots of people still died,” Crowe drawls. “A for effort though.”

Nyx winces. Crowe is a fantastic person, but she’s also kind of an asshole. “Well… that’s kind of  _ it _ , Crowe,” he says quietly, before the anger in Riku’s face can build. “He  _ does _ have magic. Both of them do.”

The other glaive snaps her gaze toward him, searching for any hint of a lie. Iris, too, jerks upright, looking first at Nyx, then across the booth at the other kids.

“I didn’t even realize,” Iris says slowly. She locks eyes with Kairi. “You saved me, and Jared too, and I… I didn’t even think at the time, but King Regis was already dead by then, wasn’t he?” She pauses. “Thank you for that. I didn’t say so, before.”

Kairi turns slightly pink in the cheeks. “You’re welcome. But. What does the king have to do with whether we can use magic?”

Crowe turns very still. “Where did you say you were from, again?”

“We didn’t,” Riku says sharply. “And we’re just here looking for our friend. We haven’t heard from him in a few days, and he’s even more prone to so-called  _ pointless heroics _ than me.” He’s glaring at Crowe angrily.

Crowe’s eyebrows rise steadily, like she can’t believe her life. “ _ Magic, _ ” she repeats.

Nyx nods with kind of a helpless shrug. “Magic kids.”

She rounds on the pair of them. “Your friend wouldn’t happen to  _ also _ be magic, have bright blue eyes, brown hair spiked up in all directions, and completely and totally unable to lie? Or even look  _ remotely _ like his life hasn’t been all sunshine and puppies?”

“Okay, now it’s my turn to ask what the hell,” Nyx deadpans, at the same time as Kairi exclaims, “That’s Sora!”

“Is he here?” Riku just short of demands.

“Doubt it, but if he stayed where I put him he might be on his way?” Crowe shrugs. “Maybe. It was a little chaotic when I had to split.”

“What happened?” Iris asks, looking a lot more awake.

Crowe sighs. “Got ambushed in Tenebrae. It was Luche, long story short he rambled about how  _ Drautos _ had a plan to get our homes back, but that was all bull. Sora came outta nowhere and scared Luche out of his sniper’s nest. Completely by accident, I might add.”

“Luche?” Nyx’s eyes go wide. “Fuck.”

“I took a giant bet on your friend, especially when he summoned that giant  _ key _ of his. Had him get the Princess out of Fenstala Manor and set him up with my contact to get them both out of Tenebrae and into Accordo. From there it wouldn’t be hard for them to get to Lucis, but frankly the Princess might be safer in Accordo.”

Nyx frowns. “Who was your contact?”

“A Nif air commodore, but originally a mercenary, and therefore bribable.”

He thinks for a moment. “They might be headed for Lucis directly. Before Drautos -  _ Glauca _ \- caught up to me I picked up some radio chatter about concentrating Imperial forces in Lucis to secure the takeover. They’re gonna be all over their old strongholds left over from the war.”

“You mean what just happened  _ wasn’t _ part of a war?” Kairi says, looking a bit sick.

Nyx sighs. “It’s complicated.”

Riku glares at him. “Un-complicate it.”

Nyx stares at him for a split second like he can’t believe the person sitting in front of him  _ isn’t _ a smaller version of Cor, and mentally shakes himself. “Officially the  _ war _ war ended thirty years ago, but only because Insomnia was impenetrable and the two sides reached a standstill. Then there was a peace treaty. Niflheim would gain all lands except Insomnia, and the Crown Prince would be married to the Oracle-Princess of Tenebrae, for a cessation of hostilities. The treaty signing fell apart. It was a ruse, best I can guess. They used the offer of peace as an excuse to infiltrate Insomnia and attack from within.”

“So, not so much a war as a war  _ crime _ ,” Crowe says stiffly. “I tried to get back -”

“Yeah, Libertus mentioned.”

“For all the good it did.” Crowe’s smile is a twisted, bitter thing. “ _ A for effort _ , right?”

Riku glances at her in some surprise. Nyx reaches over and squeezes his friend’s hand. She graces him with a withering look and jerks her hand away, then inches her chair closer to Nyx’s and slumps at his side like nothing even happened.

“Point is, with all the shit that’s gone down in the last couple days,  _ nothing _ is solid ground right now. And Lady Lunafreya… she could be anywhere.”

“And so could Sora,” Riku sighs, leaning back. Nyx is glad to see that whatever offense he had taken before, it seems to be gone.

“Well, not  _ anywhere _ ,” Iris muses. “They’ll come to Lucis sooner or later. If sooner, directly with your contact, the majority of Imperial bases are further west, across Duscae and Cleigne. If later, by boat, Galdin Quay is completely blocked off, and the only other usable ports are Cape Caem and Cape Shawe.” She smiles at the two. “You should come to Lestallum with me and Dustin. It’s right in the middle of all those places, and would make a great base to start your search from. Plus I think most refugees are already heading there, so it’d mean a lot of people going in and out.”

“So even better chances of running into each other,” Riku says, understanding. “Yeah, it’s a good idea.”

“Are you sure though?” Kairi asks. “I know you’ve lost a lot. I don’t want you to feel responsible for us.”

Nyx privately thinks it’s much too late for that.

Iris smiles weakly. “My only other travelling companions are a ten year old boy and an elderly butler. Honestly, your company alone would be enough reason for me to ask you along.”

“Cor would probably feel better about your safety with these two there as well, Lady Iris,” Nyx puts in.

Kairi and Riku exchange a glance. “Alright,” Kairi says, after a moment. “We’ll do it.”

Riku sighs loudly and slumps even as he nods in agreement.

“What?” Kairi asks him.

“Just… I told Mickey this would just be a quick errand.”

“And he knew better?”

“He absolutely did.”

\---

“Alright, kiddies. Rise and shine.”

Sora blinks up at the sudden addition of light, fingers still stretching out his mouth and eyes, to see the Commodore staring down at them with an expression he can’t decipher. 

“What are you doing? Is there  _ something _ in the air? Half my crew is Magitek, you need to tell me,” she says.

Sora thinks Commodore Highwind is pretty cool. Her armor is  _ awesome, _ and she walks around like she owns the place. Which, to be honest, she does. Plus the way she wears her hair kind of reminds him of Riku, and that’s, like, the  _ definition _ of cool all by itself. 

Most of all, though, she’s helping them out, even though she doesn’t have to. Yeah, Crowe  _ paid _ her to help them out, but only half. The other half was supposed to be paid once they got to where they were going, and Sora… doesn’t have that. Commodore Highwind knows this, but she smuggled them aboard anyway. Sora thinks that was pretty cool of her.

So he puts his hands down and grins at her. “Just giving your engines a boost.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Sora sees Princess Lunafreya stifle a giggle with one delicate hand, and internally high-fives himself.  _ Success _ .

The Commodore just gives him a flat look. “Well, good luck with that, because we’re about to land. Put these on.” She lobs a duffle bag in their general direction. “Give it about twenty minutes after we touch down for all the soldiers to clear out. After that I can buy you a few minutes to slip away unnoticed.”

Lunafreya digs through the bag, revealing a couple of drab janitorial uniforms and a hat. “We’ve arrived in Lucis?” she asks, like she almost can’t believe it.

“As per your ladyship’s  _ last-minute _ request,” Commodore Highwind says dryly.

She bows her head in reply. “My sincerest thanks for -”

“Save it.” The princess looks slightly startled at the sharp interruption, but Highwind’s expression is kind. “There’s not a decent person on Eos who would deny the Oracle anything. Get out of here, go do whatever it is you need to do. Let nothing and no one stand in your way.”

Lunafreya meets the Commodore’s eyes and nods.

-

They hide out in the maze of shipping containers, then cross a road into some brushlands where the only things around are some furry herdbeasts that seem docile enough. So far, so good. For… whatever it is they’re doing.

Sora thinks that the princess looks pretty different in a nondescript brown button-down, golden hair twisted up into a similarly dirt-colored cap. Sora had shed the disguise as soon as they were clear of the base, but Lunafreya kept it on, and kept her gaze resolutely ahead. She hasn’t spoken much.

“Is ‘Oracle’ what they call princesses around here?” he asks, kind of out of nowhere.

She is already looking at him, and he realizes at a distance that she was about to say something as well. “I suppose - mine is a bit of a special case,” she says finally.

He isn’t sure what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything for a bit. The question does eventually burst out of him, however. He never  _ could _ keep quiet. “So... where are we going?”

For a long moment, Lunafreya doesn’t answer, only keeps walking ahead. It’s grassy here, out past the stronghold walls, and they’re following a rusty chain-link fence that looks like it hasn’t been maintained in decades. Way ahead in the distance Sora can see impact formations in the rock, as well as some blindingly white shape that rises out of the center like a colossal wing. He’s in the middle of trying to decide if it’s a heat haze or something else blurring the object’s edges when Lunafreya speaks again.

“Sora, would you do something for me?”

“Sure!” he chirps.

“I would like very much… if you would find my friend Noctis and let him know that I am alright.”

He’s about to answer in a cheerful affirmative when he hears barking. A medium-sized black dog crests over the nearest hill and into view, loping excitedly in their direction. And for the second time since he’s known her, the Oracle looks utterly surprised.

Sora squeals in excitement on a note that makes Riku tease him about his voice breaking, and goes to meet the dog. He falls right to his knees in front of the dog, who seems used to this kind of treatment, and presents himself for sniffing.

The dog gives him a brusque sniff, deems him fine, and Sora sets to petting with all the enthusiasm of a five-year-old. “Who’s a good boy? You’re a good boy! Good pupper! You’re so  _ fluffy _ , oh man, wait, you have a backpack? Are you a messenger dog?”

Said messenger dog barks an affirmative just as Lunafreya comes up from behind and kneels next to them, deftly opening the backpack and retrieving the notebook inside.

She doesn’t say anything as she rifles through the book’s pages to find the one she wants, and only looks both joyful and inexplicably sad when she reads whatever is written there.

“I hope it’s good news?” Sora says tentatively, one hand still buried in the dog’s fur.

“It is,” she says with a shaky smile. “Only… the last bit of good news for a while, I think.”

“Aw, don’t say that,” he tries to cheer her up again. “Who’s it from?”

“My very dear friend,” she says softly. “He is safe and on the move, or at least he was when he wrote this not long ago.”

An idea hits him suddenly. “Oh! You could write to Noctis just like this other friend wrote to you, and then all your friends will know you’re okay!” Dogs are already pretty great in Sora’s opinion, but messenger dogs just went up several notches in esteem for that alone.

Lunafreya opens her mouth. Closes it again. Finally she says simply, “You shouldn’t be here, Sora.”

“Well, yeah, but someone asked for my help, so I’m helping.” More than one person, at this rate. He still has to find Carbuncle’s special person. “And you need a friend, anyway.”

“It’s not your business to help. Sora, I  _ know _ this isn’t your world.”

He considers this. It’s sort of a first. “I mean, it  _ kind of _ is. My business, I mean.” He brings the Kingdom Key to his hand in a shower of light. “I take it you know what these are?”

She nods. “I do.”

“And… you know what they’re supposed to protect.”

Lunafreya sighs, soft but prolonged. “To answer your earlier question - yes, Sora. The people of Eos refer to their world’s Princess of Heart as _the_ _Oracle_.”

“And you’re the Oracle. Great! Means I’m right where I need to be.”

“The Oracle’s journey is to be completed alone.”

He blinks at her. “Well that’s dumb.” Her eyes widen in surprise. “I’m serious! You’ve run away from home, lied to your family, got shipped off to a strange place with nothing but the clothes on your back - I’ve been there! That’s not something  _ anyone _ should have to do alone.”

He still remembers the gnawing terror of waking up in Traverse Town with everything he ever knew just  _ gone _ . It took Leon  _ knocking him out _ before Sora could calm down enough to accept help and advice, but he's glad it worked out the way it did. He couldn't have gone through what he has on his own. No one should have to.

“The Empire shadows my every move -”

“All the more reason you need a friend at your side.”

“Sora -”

“Would you ask Noctis to make  _ his _ trip all by himself?”

That actually gets her to stop. “No,” she whispers, so quietly he almost doesn’t hear her. “I would never.”

Slowly, Sora approaches and reaches up to rest his hand lightly on Lunafreya’s shoulder, reminiscent of when he had a very similar conversation with Riku the day Sora finally dragged him back home. The princess is actually even taller than Riku, which is a little awkward, but he manages. “You can’t hold yourself to a higher standard than everyone else,” he says. “Anything you want for your friends, I know your friends would want for you! So don’t isolate yourself, okay? You have people who want to help.”

Even Lunafreya’s rigidly controlled expression is the same as Riku’s, but Sora doesn’t say anything more, only keeps his hand where it is. 

She swallows, and her voice cracks when she speaks. “I seek an audience with Titan at the Disc of Cauthess.”

He smiles. “Would you like some company along the way?”

“I would,” Lunafreya says very softly, hugging the notebook to her chest. “Very much.”

“Awesome!” He jumps in the air a bit in excitement, and the dog jumps and barks between them. “Let’s go!”

Princess Lunafreya smiles, and the two of them fall into step with the messenger dog racing ahead. They pass through a gap in the fence and walk toward the weird rock formation in the distance… which, now that he thinks about it, is starting to look rather disc-like.

“Soooo… who’s your friend from the notebook? Noctis and…?”

She laughs, just slightly. “They’re the same friend,” she admits. “I’ve… really only ever had one.”

And she tried to ditch him by sending him on an unnecessary task, to find a friend she already has a line of communication with. That's just plain funny.

“Well,” Sora says, walking ahead backwards to grin at her. “Now you have two!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _OKAY SO now that KH3 is out...and I've gotten all my incoherent screaming out of the way...(yes I binge-played the SHIT out that game, Ryuu and I finished it in three days). We're definitely adding a lot from the game here. Expect some travel to KH worlds. Possibly.  
>  And stupid shit. All the stupid shit ideas Sora goes through is my idea. Except for Hobo!Sora. That's Ryuu's idea. Just. KH3 gave me endless ideas for little ideas to fill out characterization. I can't stop spouting them._ -Isis
> 
> My son steals from cash registers and food stalls. I'm so proud. -Ryuu


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I need more affection than you know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ryuu: hey i just found this video, check it out. we can discuss which parts are stupid and which parts are worth keeping.  
>  _15 minutes later…_  
>  Isis: -dumps 90% of Episode Ardyn Prologue in the trash-
> 
> ...Okay probably not actually 90%. Just a lot of it. But the important parts we can work with.  
> Except for Aera. I refuse to accept another fridging.
> 
> Anyway. Most of this chapter almost didn’t exist. And then it sort of came into existence. So here’s all of this bonus content I guess? This chapter is very soft, a direct contrast to the last couple. We have the firm opinion that soft moments like this are what make the story. Thank you for reading so far.
> 
> Side note: Sora considers gravity optional. It’s gonna be a running theme with us. -Isis

The Regalia makes its way through the blistering dustbowl that is northern Leide. It’s bizarre to think that this is the same road they spent hours pushing this car down less than a week ago. This time around there’s a serious sense of finality that the other one lacked - complete with cinematic downpour of dreary rain.

Prompto’s in the back seat this time. Iggy and Gladio are up front, talking about important stuff, and Prompto lets them go at it. Serious, political talk is what those two are good at - they were trained for this. That’s probably also the reason they haven’t completely freaked out yet, come to think of it.

Prompto knows the tells, though. The fact that Gladio actually opted to sit in the front says a lot, and the big guy’s sitting so ramrod straight that the top of his hair keeps getting squashed by the roof of the car. Ignis he hasn’t known as long, but Prompto can see the knuckles shining white and bloodless through the vents in his driving gloves, and there’s a weird twitch in his jaw that he doesn’t seem aware of.

“Don’t suppose the Crownsguard’s still active,” Gladio says, half-rhetorically.

Ignis shakes his head. “Perhaps a few. Difficult to say with the Marshal out here.”

“I wonder how things are in the city…” Prompto murmurs, mostly to himself.

“There should be reports before long,” Ignis answers.

“Yeah,” says Gladio. “Something this big can’t go ignored.”

No kidding. Prompto knows Insomnia’s skyline well, and what he saw from the overlook was nothing like that. Something like a third of the skyscrapers he knew  _ should _ have been there were just  _ gone _ , but even more disturbing was the obvious addition: a hulking monstrosity just… sitting there. Not moving at all, just waiting in the middle of the city. Prompto couldn’t make out many details at that distance, but it was organic. And it had teeth.

There’s no question about it. Home is gone. Prompto draws his knees up to his chest and wonders about the little, empty house he grew up in. He can’t picture it all that well. Through high school, Prompto tended to sleep at Noct’s place more often than not. And the two weeks before they set out for Altissia were spent almost entirely at the Citadel while he took the crash course in Crownsguard training that was mandatory if he wanted to tag along.

Was that little house squashed like the rest? Was Noct’s apartment?

It starts to hit him, then, just how dead he’d be if Noctis hadn’t invited him along. The others, they lost everything. But everything Prompto cares about is right here in this car.

“What about us?” he finds himself asking. “What do we do?”

“We make for Hammerhead now, and figure the rest out later,” says Gladio. He looks like he’s about to add something else when his phone beeps. He checks it, and lets out a breath.

“Good news?” asks Ignis.

“Yeah. A message from my sister. She’s with refugees bound for Lestallum.”

“Really?” Prompto leans forward around the front seat and catches the tail end of a message from an unsaved number on Gladio’s phone -  _ need to slip past some kind of imperial construction project so i’m keeping the phone on silent. will reply when i can. _ Then the screen scrolls upward as Gladio begins texting her back. He leans back in his seat again and sighs. “Well, at least Iris is okay.”

“Yeah,” says Gladio, not looking up from his phone. “Doesn’t sound like everyone else was so lucky, though.”

Ignis nods. “We’d best make haste. Noct won’t be ‘dead’ forever.”

Noct. Prompto sneaks a sidelong glance at his best friend, who hasn’t said a word since he hung up with Cor. The prince, or maybe king now, is sitting across the back seat with both hands balled into fists on his knees. He’s not looking at any of them, or out the window. He’s not looking at anything.

Prompto bites his lip, then reaches across to touch Noct’s hand. Noctis jumps like he’s been stung and looks at him sharply, but doesn’t otherwise move.

“No going back,” Prompto says softly. “Only way is forward.”

It’s a line of dialogue from the console version of King’s Knight, sort of a meme the pair of them used to quote at each other before exams. Prompto’s not sure if an in-joke is kind of tasteless right now, but he hopes it has the desired effect.

It does. Noctis takes a breath, swallows, and lets some of the tension out of his shoulders. “...No going back.”

\--

Cindy runs to meet them as soon as they pull in, and hugs each one of them with palpable relief. Gladio’s the only one of them who doesn’t freeze up at the display, which would have been funny to the Shield on any day but this one. Uncharacteristically subdued, she delivers her news: that Cor left for Prairie Outpost not that long ago.

“Alright,” says Noct, reaching for the car door. “Let’s move.”

Gladio steps in his way.

Noct gives him a hard look. “Out of my way. We’re going.”

Gladio doesn’t move, or say anything. Neither does Ignis. It’s Prompto who has to say it, in the end.

“Noct,” Prompto says in a strained voice, “we can’t.”

“And why the hell not?” 

“It’s three hours to Prairie Outpost,” says Ignis, calmly. “We’d arrive well after sunset. In this rain it’d get dark enough for daemons to emerge even sooner.”

“Imperials are swarming the countryside by now,” adds Gladio. 

“And we’re  _ tired _ ,” says Prompto. “Maybe we could fight off some of those things if we had to, but we  _ don’t _ have to. Not tonight, not yet.”

Noctis stands frozen, one arm still stretched toward the car. Gladio sighs and takes him by the shoulder. “C’mon, Noct. Food first.” Then he adds, “Hey Iggy, wanna go book the camper for us? We’ll meet you in the diner.”

Ignis nods. “Of course,” he says, and walks off in the direction of the caravan. Prompto looks uncertain who he wants to follow until Ignis grabs him by the arm and pulls him along with him. Smart guy.

Takka has a big platter of his jambalaya ready to go before they even walk in. It's still steaming, all meat and chilli sauce and grease, and the platter is nested in an absolute pile of napkins on the tray. Gladio raises an eyebrow, and Takka slides the dish his way.

“It's been a long day for comfort food,” he says.

Damn if that ain't the truest thing ever said. 

Gladio returns to the booth. By the time he gets there Noct's got this look on his face, the closed-off one he always pulls when he doesn't want to deal with something. His arms are folded, and his eyes are fixed at a point on the wall.

He puts the tray downl in front of him. “C’mon. Eat somethin’.”

No response. He sighs and raises his voice a bit, the ‘hey you gotta pay attention’ tone he mostly uses for training. “Noct.”

Noct winces. “I think I’m just gonna throw up if I try,” he whispers.

Okay. Okay, that he understands. It’s another trip up to the bar and Takka, but he comes back with two glasses of ice water and plastic wrapped saltines. “Here. Slow sips.”

Noct obeys, and Gladio pokes unenthusiastically at the greasy food, shoves down a few bites when he can. It’s difficult. But Noctis is barely holding it together, so Gladio can hold it for him for a little while. 

It hasn’t really hit him yet, if he’s honest with himself. Maybe he’s compartmentalizing, maybe he’s lived his life in anticipation of a loss similar to this one, but frankly all he can feel is a stupid, all-encompassing  _ relief _ . Noctis is here, alive and breathing, right in front of him. Gladio didn't fail. Lucis is razed to so much ash, but he didn't  _ fail _ . Not yet.

Maybe the grief will hit later. Well, it definitely will, but for now Gladio can pretend to hope it won't. Or at least hope it hits when no one's watching.

His prince opens a package of crackers - eats one, then the other, and looks at his plate with a bit more interest.

“How many people d’you think are left alive?” 

The question hits Gladio out of nowhere. He clears his throat. “Crownsguard? Civilians?”

Noct shrugs.

“Crownsguard, not many, maybe a handful, whoever Cor brought with him, I guess. As for civilians… we’ll hear about refugee numbers over the next few days.” It’s not a pretty picture, either way. He  _ saw _ the blown-out bridge at the overlook. Who knows if the Niffs did that  _ before _ or after everyone was done running away. Or if the other one’s still intact. Probably not. And there are probably some poor suckers stuck in rubble...He shuts that thought down before he can get into the nitty-gritty ugly details of a destroyed city that  _ nobody _ is gonna send aid to. 

Nobody except Niflheim, maybe. And wow, isn’t  _ that _ a can of worms for another day.

Then Gladio wonders if his thoughts aren’t written all over his face, because Noct is fidgeting now, tapping the plastic wrapping restlessly on the tabletop. 

“...We should go back to Insomnia. See who’s still alive,” Noct suggests quietly.

Gladio is reminded abruptly of just how much Noctis means to him, and of the prince’s bottomless well of desperate compassion that flattens him sometimes. “I could spend all day listing the reasons why that’s a bad idea,” he says.

“Then what kind of  _ king _ does that make me?” He hisses, hand fisting around the plastic. “Kings are the ones with the power, but it’s the people who suffer for how they use it. Dad  _ abandoned _ them because of  _ me _ , Gladio!”

“And my dad gave his life so that your dad could save yours.” Gladio growls.

Noctis, already pale, turns sheet white. “I… I didn’t…”

Aaaaaand there's the grief. Dammit.

Gladio rubs at his face, shoves it down, and says, “It’s just a fact, Noct. One we’ve  _ both _ spent our entire lives preparing for. And if you think the best use of your time is to run headlong into newly-conquered Imperial territory to dig people out of the rubble, you had better believe I will give  _ my _ life so you can do just that. I can think of a few other options that are less likely to end in one or both of our deaths, but it ain’t my call to make. It’s yours.”

Ignis and Prompto, bless their damn hearts, choose that moment to enter the diner with a chime of the front door's bell. Noct’s gaze ticks back and forth between the pair of them and Gladio as they approach, and Gladio watches something firm trickle together behind his king’s eyes.

_ It’s not only that you’re our responsibility. It’s that we’re  _ yours _. So get your feet back on the ground and act like it. _

Ignis claims the seat next to Noct, placing himself between his charge and the rest of the world. Prompto flops down next to Gladio.

“Oh,  _ wow _ that smells good,” says the blond, eying the still mostly untouched meal. “No way you're eating  _ all _ of that, right Noct? I can steal some?”

“Takka's jambalaya is served on a platter. Meant to be shared among a group,” Ignis elaborates. And sure enough, there's a stack of paper plates tucked under the platter on the tray. “Did you procure any utensils, Gladio?”

Gladio cracks a sort of half-smile. “Looked like finger-food to me.”

Ignis rolls his eyes. “Prompto, if you would?”

“On it!”

The blonde bounces back up to the counter, waiting his turn to catch Takka’s attention again. Ignis fusses with the paper plates, setting them out for the four of them and adjusting the platter of jambalaya’s position to the middle of the table. Ignis’s hands can’t seem to keep still, a rare case of fidgets signalling, as if with neon lights, that he is just as upset as the rest of them. 

Gladio catches Ignis’s eye and winks at him. The brief confusion in the other man’s face, until he recognizes it for the distraction it was, is enough to ground him again.

(One day he'll make Iggy realize what flirting is. Today is not that day.)

“You should drink the rest of your water, Noct,” Ignis says when there’s nothing left he can fiddle with. 

Noct opens his mouth, no doubt to say something shitheaded, so Gladio sidetracks it. “Don’t fuss over him, Iggy. He’s a big boy.”

The prince gives him a heated look and downs the rest of his water. Gladio snickers to himself and pulls a chunk of daggerquill breast out of the jambalaya with his fingers.

“Here ya go,” Prompto announces when he returns. “Got some extra napkins too. Aw  _ man _ that looks good - come to papa!” He spoons his own helping onto his paper plate, making sure to catch a lot of the sauce with it. A few seconds later, Prompto’s eyes go wide as he discovers in his enthusiasm that the food is still very hot.

Ignis wordlessly slides him the second glass of water. 

Noct’s face twitches in what might be the ghost of a smile, and spoons his own serving onto his plate, immediately starting on his eternal war with the existence of vegetables. It isn’t long before there’s a small pile of them at the edge of his plate, causing Ignis to sigh longsufferingly. 

“Noct…”

“Eh. What harm can missing one day of veggies do?” Gladio shrugs, waving off Ignis’s concern.

Ignis rolls his eyes, which in Iggy-speak is more or less agreeing with him but not saying it out loud.

The back and forth does the trick, as Noctis starts to eat. There’s a slight twitch on his face, surprised satisfaction, and the speed the spoon takes from plate to mouth increases. He sees Ignis take note, and the ever-present notebook appears soon after.

Gladio finally shovels out his own serving, digging in. He’s not exactly hungry either, but after a day like this, he  _ knows _ he needs the fuel. He can feel the future looming ahead of them like the edge of a cliff, and they’re hurtling right towards it.

_ Plan for the future _ , his dad said,  _ but don't dwell on it. _ For right now, they are as safe as he can make them, and that has to be enough.

\--

Sleeping with the lights off outside of the Wall only invites catastrophe, but Ignis can never get entirely accustomed to it. Even the havens maintain a certain glow, though admittedly one much more easily blocked out for a restful night’s sleep. It is magic, rather than photons, keeping daemons at bay within their holy boundaries.

Caravans have to make do with floodlights.

Truthfully, the RV stationed at Hammerhead is a fairly comfortable one, all things considered. With three narrow bunks and a full bed in the back - on top of a surprisingly decent kitchenette - there is enough sleeping space for everyone in their party. It’s more than can be said for most campers, or even some hotels. Gladio is already sprawled across the bottom bunk while Prompto is nearly invisible on the top - the bed in back had, of course, gone to His Highness. But the lack of proper darkness makes sleep fleeting and dashedly difficult for Ignis to grasp.

Not that Ignis isn't used to such a schedule - late to bed, early to rise, and thank all the gods for espresso. But he had rather hoped it wouldn't be necessary on what was at worst a diplomatic visit and at best a vacation. 

(Back at Galdin Quay, Ignis all but saw his own death in that newspaper headline, but swallowed it down. There was work to be done.)

Now everything depends on Noctis, and that is a somewhat terrifying thought. Not because doubts the prince’s capability, but because he is  _ certain _ of it. For all that he shirks responsibility and presents a wall of false apathy to the world, Noctis would give his life for his people. And Ignis will give  _ everything _ to ensure he does not have to.

Luckily he is not alone in this; Gladio will as well. In situations like this, Ignis imagines Gladio as a lightning rod - drawing leftover nervous energy into himself and putting it where it can’t do any harm. 

He’d done excellently with Noct this afternoon, settling him down, making him eat - grounding him, like he grounded all of them. Even Prompto helped, in his small way, running interference in matters that the others by definition had to keep themselves separate from, and keeping the prince from falling too far into his own head.

Now it’s Ignis’s turn.

Because, unlike the rest of their group - and, in fact, completely counter to his general character - Noctis is still perfectly awake in that bed in the back of the caravan, with one arm lying across his forehead, shading his vacant eyes. Not only awake, but lying stiffly on the edge of the bed, seemingly trying to take up as little space as possible. 

This is Concerning because, as Prompto and Gladio realized on their first night camping together, and as Ignis had known since they were children, Noctis Lucis Caelum - the quiet and aloof crown prince of Lucis - becomes an octopus in his sleep.

He’d been dreadfully embarrassed by it, that first morning outside the city when he woke up half on top of a terribly red-faced Prompto, arms twined around his friend’s torso like he’d fall from some great height if he dared let go. The prince had waved it away as a one-off occurrence, but that became more difficult as it continued to happen, night after night. Ignis had long since learned the trick of disentangling himself without waking Noctis up, but Gladio found his turns as the prince’s body pillow hysterically funny and woke him deliberately every time. And Prompto? He seemed on the surface to be just as mortified as Noctis by the display, but has since taken a… a certain  _ physical liberty _ with him that they only pretended to be scandalized by.

(Noct’s  _ face _ when Prompto first smacked his back end was  _ priceless _ , and he wishes he’d had the blonde’s camera to capture the moment forever.) 

No, Noctis lying flat and still and very pointedly  _ awake _ is a bad sign indeed. One Ignis does not intend to leave unaddressed.

He crouches down by Noct’s head and breathes his name.

Noctis peaks out from under the shade his arm provides. “Heya, Specs,” he says, with a crooked smile that does not reach his eyes.

“Do you have a migraine?” Ignis asks.

“Nah.” He covers his eyes again. “‘S fine, Ignis. Go to sleep.”

Ignis hums. “The day I fall asleep before you is a concerning day indeed.”

There’s a pause that lasts just a hair too long before Noct replies: “Stranger things have happened.”

_ INSOMNIA FALLS! _ read the morning’s headline. It’s still seems just as impossible now as it did twelve hours ago. Ignis blinks, and softly says, “I suppose we all must stretch our suspension of disbelief somewhat.”

Noctis turns over with a sigh, so that he is lying on his side. His face is very close suddenly, and Ignis can see the way the prince’s eyelashes are clumped together, like he’s been crying.

Hesitantly, Noct asks, “Do… Do you remember when we were kids?”

“Vividly. Any aspect in particular you’d care to reminisce about?”

“I mean…” Noctis shifts. “Not when we were  _ little _ little kids, just - When I got back from Tenebrae, and I’d get those nightmares sometimes… and I wasn’t sure if I could wake up Dad or not, but you always told me I should.”

Ignis begins to see where this is going. The first time, all those years ago, Noctis was so unsure, so reluctant to seek out comfort, that Ignis had led the prince by the hand to his father’s door. King Regis had taken one look at them, clothes and hair rumpled from lying in bed but not sleeping, Noctis unable to raise his eyes from the floor and Ignis standing tall in his stead, and picked them both up, a boy under each arm. They fell asleep like that, tucked under Regis’s chin in his elaborate bed. 

Ignis loved King Regis like a father, and Regis always treated Ignis like one of his own. The king’s death is a burning hole of grief in Ignis’s chest that can’t be filled - he can’t even imagine what it must be like for Noctis.

He wonders, suddenly, if he’s been unresponsive for too long, but Noctis doesn’t look uncomfortable. Only thoughtful, and incalculably sad. 

At length, Ignis says, “Your father’s death is a great loss for all of us, and probably thousands more. You’re not -”

“‘Not alone.’ I know,” Noctis says, flipping back over onto his back. “I’ve been hearing it from all sides today.”

And that’s just it, isn’t it? All the responsibility of the world shoved onto the Prince’s narrow shoulders in the space of a day. Running errands for strangers, feeding lost cats, and spending hours in the desert looking for a dog tag to give a grieving family closure don’t even come close.

Noctis only knows how to care with his whole heart. It’s a quality in the prince that Ignis unreservedly adores, but not knowing how to keep the world at a reasonable distance - all or nothing - has its drawbacks. In fact, it often results in a person who feels uncomfortable with overt displays of affection, yet craves it so desperately that he seeks it out in his sleep.

...Maybe Ignis can’t imagine, not really. But at least he comes close. And that’s what Noctis needs right now: something familiar in a world turned upside down.

He considers for a moment, then places a careful hand in Noct’s hair, smoothing it back. Noctis lifts his arm away from his face to give Ignis a puzzled look. 

“Care to sit up for me, Noct?”

As Noctis does so, Ignis settles into the empty space left behind. It’s not much of one, and Noctis doesn’t seem to know what to do with the sudden closeness, but Ignis only places an arm around the prince’s shoulder and tugs. Just enough to be a suggestion, not a command.

Noctis settles against his chest, stiff and unsure, and Ignis pauses.

“Is this alright, Noct?”

“I, uh. I mean - yes, of course, if. If that’s what. Um. I just didn’t, uh... Didn’t expect - “

Ignis heaves a sigh. If the prince thinks his own advisor isn’t someone he could turn to, then that’s Ignis’s own failing. Years of dignity and cool professionalism are what kept him by Noct’s side, but they can be shed in an instant. What drives Ignis to stay there is something else entirely.

When they were children, keeping Noctis safe was all Ignis wanted. It was what King Regis asked of him, it is Ignis’s Calling in life. Then they grew into adults, and the world became significantly more complicated, but… if Noctis needs it, then this can stay the same. It had been a long time - too long - since they fell asleep against one another, over a book or under the stars, and Ignis knows he has only himself to blame for that. But even an old pattern is a familiar one, and with a slightly smaller sigh, Noctis turns onto his side so that his ear is over Ignis’s heart, and relaxes.

Ignis feels something inside him shatter like glass. In its wake is a shifting cauldron of emotion he does not want to examine too closely at this moment. For all his civility and restrained personality, Ignis knows that there is something just under his skin who would tear apart the world given enough cause. It shifts, now, as he wraps his arms around Noctis and squeezes once, and props his chin on soft black hair. 

“I’ve got you,” he whispers.

Noctis says nothing, only continues the steady rise and fall of his chest. Ignis clings to that, for as long as he can keep Noctis safe in his arms.

\---

Gentiana meets them at the edge of the Disc, with the trident held in one hand and Pryna resting at her feet. 

She gives Sora a long look as they approach. “Greetings, keybearer,” she says at length. 

Lunafreya is a little surprised, but not by much. Though Gentiana often accompanies her on her travels and will appear if she asks for her presence, the High Messenger prefers to remain hidden in the presence of others, and has never spoken aloud to anyone but herself and Noctis. But keybearers are Messengers in their own right - servants not of the gods, but of the very Stars of heaven. Lunafreya supposes that puts Sora on equal footing with the Oracle, in Gentiana’s eyes.

“Uh. Hi there!” he says in response. “I’m Sora!”

“What news brings a world-walker to our distant star?” Gentiana says with a curious tilt of her head.

And - stars above, Lunafreya doesn't think she's ever heard the High Messenger sound  _ cautious _ before.

She's heard of keybearers, of course. They are drawn to worlds during tumultuous periods in their history, though most references to such star-seekers are quite old indeed. Some texts claim that keyblades and their wielders are what  _ bring _ chaos to a star, but Mother was always very insistent that they  _ solve _ problems, and were sent by the stars to oversee times of great change. She believed keybearers were inherently trustworthy, just as much guardians of the Light as the line of Oracles.

Sora explains to Gentiana: “I sort of… ended up here through a dream? This dream-eater named Carbuncle asked me to help its friend, who I’m still looking for. But I figure helping the local Princess of Heart with whatever she needs is a good start to that.”

Lunafreya is unfamiliar with the term ‘dream-eater’, but… “Do you refer to the Messenger Carbuncle, Guardian of Dreams?”

Sora turns to her and shrugs. “Maybe? It was a little thing that looked kinda like a whitish fox, only with really long ears and a tiny red horn on its forehead.”

While he was healing in Tenebrae, Noctis spoke often of the little spirit who kept him company during his long coma, though Lunafreya thought privately that he only mentioned it around her or King Regis. Sora’s description matches Noctis’s almost exactly.

She opens her mouth to say so when Gentiana’s cool voice whispers a private warning into her mind.

_ I bid my lady exercise caution. New eyes may see a new solution, but careless hands may disrupt a tenuous balance. Take heed. I shall uncover the truth of this matter. _

Aloud, Gentiana says, “We Messengers may take many forms, and that is indeed one. I wish you luck on your search, keybearer.”

“Uh - thanks,” says Sora, tilting his head.

Gentiana then turns and opens her eyes, locking them on Lunafreya’s with uncanny precision. “You have the Frostbearer’s favor,” she says. “The King shall receive her blessing when the time comes. Seek now the Landforger, and guide the Chosen along his path according to the wheel of the gods.”

The Messenger bows and presents the Trident of the Oracle to Lunafreya, who takes it with steady hands and steely eyes.

“I will,” she says.

Gentiana is gone between one blink and the next, and Sora jumps in surprise. 

“‘Nother friend of yours?” he asks, after a moment.

“Of a sort,” she replies, examining her trident. It is heavy; she will need time to get accustomed to its weight again. “Gentiana is really more of a guardian. She’s looked after me since I was young.”

Sora looks like he’s about to ask something else when he is utterly distracted by Pryna stretching and yawning. The boy fawns over her much the same as he did Umbra, but Pryna wriggles out of his affections much more quickly in favor of enthusiastically greeting Lunafreya at last. 

Lunafreya smiles and kneels down to greet her dog -  _ dogs _ , as Umbra quickly joins in the attention, despite being at Luna’s side for close to an hour yet. But that’s what she loves about dogs. Old news can be made new and exciting with just a small change in perspective.

She looks up, sees that Sora has his arms crossed, and is looking at the place Gentiana was with a slight frown.

“What is it?”

“Just…” His gaze flicks between her face and the ground a few times. “Why does she keep her eyes closed?”

What an odd question. One Lunafreya hasn’t considered since she was a child. She stands and dusts herself off with one hand, the other resting on her trident like a staff. “Gentiana always told me she has no need of sight. Why do you ask?”

Sora fidgets. “Um. No reason.”

Lunafreya tilts her head at him. He really is terrible at hiding things.

At length, Sora huffs and admits, “My best friend didn’t need sight for a while either. Walked around with a blindfold for a long time. Mostly it was a disguise, ‘cause something happened that changed his appearance. But he wouldn’t really give me a straight answer about his sight. Only that his eyes couldn’t lie.”

Lunafreya blinks, confused. “Lie to whom?”

“Himself,” Sora says with a shrug. 

Lunafreya looks at the weapon in her hand, returned to the line of Oracles at just the right time by her oldest ally, and thinks about that for a while.

-

The trouble with reaching the Disc of Cauthess is that it is literally a meteor impact site, albeit a much less severe one than it could have been. Still, the very earth rises up in waves around the center, forming high steppes and impassible cliffs in jagged spirals around the heart of Duscae.

The heart of the Disc, where Titan rests, is as much a tourist destination as a place of worship. As such, the only viable path to its center has been heavily regulated for centuries, both for the safety of pilgrims and the financial security of the nearby towns.

To Lunafreya’s knowledge, there have never been  _ armed _ guards before now, though. Rows of MT footsoldiers and line the newly-fortified gate, standing still at attention as only magitek troopers can. Even as she watches, an Imperial dropship comes in from the southeast and makes dock behind the fortification, and the MTs guide it in while keeping their weapons trained with clockwork precision. It’s eerie.

It’s for her and she knows it. Lunafreya has made it no secret that her loyalties lie with the True King, much as it might have been smarter to stay quiet these past twelve years. The entire Empire knows she’ll seek out the gods first - probably even in what order. Whatever is coming in or out of this military fort can only be something to impede her.

Lunafreya considers her options.

“I could totally run us up that wall,” Sora says, conversationally.

He is referring to the very high, very sheer rock face they have been sheltering behind while Lunafreya gets her bearings and tries to come up with a plan. “Sora, it’s vertical.”

“Yeah. And?”

Lunafreya blinks and decides not to follow through with her original objection. Instead, she says, “Even if you could, I have no such ability to follow.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Sora says brightly. “You can just ride on my back!”

“No,” she says immediately, willing her face not to tinge pink.

“But -”

“Absolutely not.”

Sora folds his arms and sulks, muttering, “You  _ know _ it’d be fun…”

Truthfully, she may have to swallow her dignity and take him up on it, but it would take a more desperate situation than mere impatience to force her hand. Goodness.

The fort’s front gate swings open with a thud that startles them both, and Lunafreya peeks around the corner to look.

She sees something that makes her blood run cold.

“Sora,” she says, not nearly as quietly as before. Staying hidden is pointless now. “Stay here.”

When she steps out into view, all of the MTs are gone from the roof. Instead, there is only one person there, watching her cautious arrival as though he knew exactly where she’d be.

The Chancellor of Niflheim tips his hat. “Lady Lunafreya! What a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance at last!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Isis: You have no idea what jambalaya is, do you?  
> Ryuu: I know what its picture looks like in the game! Some kind of chicken parm-type thing, right?  
> Isis: -sends picture-  
> Ryuu: ...I can't believe a video game lied to me.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't taint this ground with the color of the past.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ryuu: Your April Fools prank is that chapter 7 comes a day early. How is this a prank? It also comes with the knowledge that we have officially run out of buffer. Don’t fret too hard though; chapter 8 is maybe a third of the way done already, so it should be out on schedule. Beyond that? [itisamystery.jpeg]
> 
> Isis: We are serious authors! I swear! We work very hard on this, between the adulting, and silverware, and the empty field of fucks we tend.
> 
> Facetious trigger warning:  
> I, Hakurei Ryuu, give negative shits about Loqi Tummelt. You have been warned.  
> I, Isis the Sphinx, give +/-0 shits about Loqi Tummelt. I _have_ read good fics with him. This is not going to be one of them.

_ The night before… _

Before the mark of mastery exam, Sora almost never remembered his dreams. Or… that’s not exactly true. Say rather, he never remembered the  _ contents _ of his dreams. 

As it turned out, most of his dreams were never really  _ his _ .

_ “What are you so afraid of?” _ asks a voice, somber but curious.

Sora thinks about Riku's outstretched hand as a tidal wave of something  _ wrong _ overtakes him; of Kairi's haunted eyes as she passed through him like she was never there; of Donald and Goofy's retreating backs, abandonment, never being  _ good enough _ on his own.

What comes out of his mouth is, “Everything I was ever scared of already happened, all at once. My home, my family… it’s all gone.”

It's not what Sora meant to say, but that's alright. It is peaceful here ‒ like home but still somehow new. There are birds somewhere nearby, along with a roaring hum he doesn't wholly recognize but is comforting all the same.

_ “What is the one thing you care about more than anything else?” _ the voice asks again… but it’s different now, playful and light.

Sora thinks of a chalk drawing on a cave wall, and its message of  _ yes, I love you too _ . He thinks of his grim determination to drag someone special back into the light even if it had to be kicking and screaming. He thinks of that same special someone dragging  _ him _ back in return, when he dove too deep. And he thinks of the message in a bottle that saved them both.

Instead, he says, “What little I have left to lose, I will cling to with everything I am. They are everything to me.”

Something seems off, Sora thinks distantly. The answers he speaks are not the same as what he means to say. But though the words, thoughts, and memories are so different from his own, the intention behind them is the same. And that makes whatever this is okay.

_ “What do you wish?” _ another voice asks, whisper-soft and just barely familiar. 

Sora has too many wishes to count. But just now, the person answering these questions has only one.

There is a disconnect, gears catching on one another as one of them falls out of sync. Without quite meaning to, he opens his eyes.

What he sees could be a shimmering waterfall or the mirror-bright edge of a skyscraper. But instead of his reflection, Sora sees someone completely new ‒ a stranger, a good five or so years older than him, a pale face atop lean shoulders, sharp blue eyes and night-black hair. 

He’s looking at Sora with just as much confusion as Sora feels.

“Are you… Are you like me?” one of them asks. Neither is sure which.

All around Sora is bright blue sky streaked with clouds, but behind his reflection it is nighttime - clear, brilliant, and full of stars.

_ I told you! _ says Carbuncle, who sits primly at their feet.  _ The same sky! _

‒‒ 

“Sora, stay here.”

The command comes out of nowhere. Sora’s more than a little confused, but does as he’s bid and doesn’t follow when Lunafreya removes the cap hiding her hair, grips her trident tightly in one hand, and steps around the corner into plain view of the gates.

“Lady Lunafreya!” says a pleasant, honey-sweet tenor. “What a pleasure it is to make your acquaintance at last!”

It’s a normal enough greeting, but spoken in such an odd way that Sora can’t help but peer cautiously around the corner at whoever is speaking. 

Princess Lunafreya is standing very straight and tall before a very odd-looking man. His clothes are clean, some threadbare, each piece seemingly chosen at random from completely different eras. He tips a  _ fedora _ of all things at the princess, with all the gravitas of a state visit and all the exaggerated charm of a salesman.

“Chancellor Izunia,” Lunafreya says with a nod.

“I’m so relieved to see you safe!” the man declares. “It seems rumors of your death have been rather exaggerated, though I should hope those closest to you will know better. Certainly Lord Ravus knows how much your duty means to you.”

Sora can’t see Lunafreya’s face, but something in her spine tightens.

“Such an exciting tale the whole thing has spun into, no?” he continues, and begins to pace around and make sweeping gestures. “I heard a whole hallway of Fenstala Manor was blocked with ice! Ravus was so distraught, why, he rushed straight off to Lucis to retrieve the one thing he believed could save you.”

“The one thing that could  _ save _ me?” Lunafreya sounds surprised.

“Had a little  _ mishap _ when he got it, of course, but nobody’s perfect,” he drawls, ignoring her. “Though fret not! He’s being treated in Gralea as we speak - though I daresay his brotherly embraces will never be quite the same.”

“To  _ what _ , exactly, are you referring?” Lunafreya demands.

The chancellor beams. “Why, the Ring of the Lucii, of course!” And he pulls something small and dark ‒ a ring, as he said ‒ out of his breast pocket.

Lunafreya takes several steps forward. “Give that to me.”

With a snap of one-handed motion that looks almost like a card trick, he hides the ring away again with a broad smile. “Why, my lady! I never took you for a woman with such lofty ambitions!”

“It belongs to the rightful King,” she says, voice low, and shifts her trident to a two-handed grip, a ready stance that Sora recognizes from Tidus back home.

“I could not agree more,” says the man. “In fact… why don’t  _ you _ give it to him?”

Sora almost doesn’t see it - a flash of silver in the man’s opposite hand, a wide swing - and he darts out of hiding in the space of a heartbeat. “Luna watch out!”

Metal-on-metal connects, the tip of a curved dagger in the man’s hand against the flat of Sora’s Kingdom Key, shoved hurriedly between the two in a guard. And, right behind it, poised to block the exact same position should Sora’s keyblade not have been there, is Lunafreya's trident.

“...Oh,” says Sora.

Lunafreya keeps her gaze trained on her attacker, but said attacker is looking down at Sora now.

“Ah, a keyblade.” The chancellor makes a pleased sound and glides backward, hands up in a ‘just joking’ manner. “I did wonder how such a thing happened in the halls of Fenestala Manor. For a moment I thought our  _ dear _ friend Gentiana intervened.” Then Izunia  _ smiles _ , with way too many teeth, and Sora instinctively puts himself between him and the princess. “And just where did you get that, young man?” 

“Like I’d tell you!”

“Sora, stay back.” Lunafreya’s voice is completely calm.

“No way! He just tried to ‒”

“He’s  _ not _ going to harm me,” she says firmly, and pointedly locks eyes with the man. “Isn’t that right?”

Izunia says nothing, only gives a theatrical bow of retreat.

Lunafreya puts her trident to the side, unguarded, and steps past Sora, holding out her hand. “ _ The Ring _ , Chancellor. Now.” 

The man smirks and lifts his hand, the ring pinched between two fingers and raised toward the princess as if in offering.

Lunafreya takes Izunia’s hand in both of hers ‒ 

‒ and  _ glows _ .

_ (“This time,  _ I’ll _ protect  _ you _ … SORA!”) _

The deja vu blindsides him, but it makes sense. Lunafreya is a  _ Princess _ . Light  _ surges _ out from her, not like Kairi’s uncontrolled bursts, but a steady, careful stream of intent. It meets Izunia’s darkness gently, and does not obliterate, but softly wipes away. 

Whatever happens next, Sora misses it, because suddenly Lunafreya crashes into him as though thrown, and Izunia advances on them with a look of fury.

“Two thousand years in, and you would end the show before it’s even begun? Tut tut, my dear.”

“The ring ‒” Lunafreya croaks.

“Dear Noctis shall have it, when the time comes, but I think I’ll keep it for the moment,” he sneers. “And in the meantime you’ve your own job to do. Why else would you be  _ oh so confident _ that I’m going to let you live?”

Sora growls and launches forward, takes a swing ‒

Izunia deflects it easily, and sends him flying. Sora lands roughly on his feet and lets out a groan of frustration, because he  _ knows _ he should be able to punch through a block like that. But the power just… isn’t there. He’s still too hollow.

Lunafreya rushes to his side as he pulls himself upright, stands in front of him with her trident in a guard, and Izunia chuckles.

“So  _ attached _ to your ‘kidnapper’ already, highness? Isn’t that precious.” He turns, a wide, drunk-looking swagger, and clicks his fingers. Behind him, the great front doors of the fort open with a groan. “The Disc of Cauthess is open to you, my lady. You and your… associate. None shall harm you past the gate, though I cannot speak for the Archean himself. You are free to approach the crater at will.”

There isn’t time for so much as a retort before a corridor of darkness swallows him up.

Which is kind of the unexpected icing on the whole unexpected cake, to be honest. Like, yes, the guy was creepy. But he didn’t strike Sora as someone wholly lost to the darkness, at least not until he smacked the princess away.

Speaking of. Said princess is tense and shaking beside him, a grim clench to her jaw and a peculiar distance to her eyes. Sora can’t tell if that distance is anger, or maybe just pain.

“Friend of yours?” he asks.

Lunafreya looks startled at the sound of his voice, then sags. “Not in the slightest,” she says softly, gathering herself and making for the open door. “But occasionally we can become allies of convenience.”

Sora follows. “So you do know him, then?”

“I’ve never met him before today. But I know who he is. And… I know what he wants.”

‒

The walk down takes hours. Sora isn't surprised. From what he could see during the initial approach, the Disc of Cauthess is  _ miles _ across, and they've been traversing switchbacks and awkward slopes on top of that. 

Chancellor Izunia, or  _ Ardyn _ as he’s apparently called, doesn’t make another appearance. As much as Sora wants to be alert, the oppressive heat makes it difficult to stay on edge ‒ moreso as the sun climbs steadily upward. On the Destiny Islands, the heat was tropical and balmy, balanced by a strong sea-breeze. Here, the air is thick with it, coming off the stone and the strange crystals in rippling waves.

He could see the meteor almost as soon as they entered. Now he can see what’s holding it.

Sora never thought he’d see a god sleeping  _ standing up. _

And Riku teased  _ him _ for being able to sleep anywhere and any time. Titan is huge, probably the size of a mountain if he wasn’t stuck down in this crater, with the meteor on his shoulders casting permanent shadows over the whole area. Not that it helps with the heat at all. 

“So you’re supposed to… wake him up, I guess?”

Lunafreya nods. “With a song.”

Sora brightens. “Oh cool, you sing?”

She graces him with a smile. “Oracles are taught melodies in the language of ancient Solheim to forge covenants with the gods. But I do enjoy music for its own sake.”

“That’s so cool,” he says, clasping his hands behind his head as they walk. “I have a friend who’s into music. Well, music is kind of a  _ thing _ for her whole family, but she was clearly the best at it. I got to help with some of her performances too!” he adds with a grin. Then he hums a few bars. “Swim this way, we’ll dance and we’ll play~”

He keeps at it as they walk ‒ even adding in some dance moves, although not many, because it is too freaking hot down here ‒ until he notices Lunafreya staring at him with the strangest expression on her face.

“What?”

“Sora,” she says flatly. “That’s atrocious.”

“What! Come on, I’m not  _ that _ bad!”

“Not your voice,” she amends. “Your voice is fine. Just… the song. It’s unbelievably terrible.”

Sora crosses his arms and pouts, kicking idly at a few rocks in the path. 

Eventually, he says, “In fairness, it was written by a talking lobster.”

Lunafreya bends double from laughing, leaning on her trident for support, and Sora grins like he just won the lottery. 

“Okay, your turn,” he says. “Where’ve you done music before?”

The princess gathers herself, still chuckling softly. “Mostly hymns for public prayer services. But when I was younger I would sing with my family as well. Or Noctis would play piano while I sang. We were both very young of course, so neither of us were very good, but it was still…” She trails off, wistful.

Sora furrows his brow. Lunafreya seems to get so sad, so easily. It’s like she thinks every happy memory she can recall is the last one she’ll ever have.

But then… she sings something. Softly, in a language Sora doesn’t understand. Her voice is beautiful, high and clear and strong.

He gives a kind of awed half-smile. “What’s it mean?”

She looks thoughtful. “Something like…  _ I give thee back the life I owe, / that in thy ocean depths, its flow / may be… _ oh, what’s the word. Fuller? Richer? The word technically refers to density but ‒” She pauses and smiles sheepishly at him. “Sorry, I’m translating and rhyming on the fly.”

“That does sound pretty cool,” Sora says, rounding a corner. It’s pretty dark, despite it being mid-morning; they must be close to the bottom. “But uh… ‘ocean depths’?” he says skeptically, gesturing to the dry, barren cliffs they’re currently navigating.

“Hm? Oh! No, that song in particular is for the Hydrean, not the Archean,” Lunafreya quickly amends. “I don’t dare even translate his song so close to his resting place, not until I’m ready to begin in full.”

“Why? Is he grumpy in the morning or something?”

Lunafreya frowns, gripping her trident tightly. “Not as such? Titan is fairly benevolent, as gods go. He is the Landforger, a builder, and steady as stone. But though the earth is abiding, it is also brutal when it wants its will to be known. We are near a very populated area, and I’d rather not take risks.”

“Ahh, I getcha,” Sora says, nodding. “Well, don’t worry too much if he gets out of hand. I’ve fought rock titans before!”

She starts to nod, then pauses. “Wait, what?”

‒ 

Trying to explain Olympus’s pantheon to a  _ very _ interested Lunafreya fills up the rest of their journey down. Admittedly, the Rock Titan Sora is familiar with and the deity of earth  _ named _ Titan aren’t as similar as he initially assumed, but he still figures the concept is a sound one. Elemental entities are pretty much the same no matter where you are.

When they reach what appears to be their destination ‒ parked more or less between the sleeping god’s feet ‒ Lunafreya discards the rest of the disguise she had worn since the airship, and is once again resplendent in white. She straightens her sweaty hair as best as she’s able, re-ties her ponytail, and adjusts her footing, trident poised in one hand at her side.

She bows to one of the gods of her world. And then she sings.

The golden magic in Lunafreya flares up again, steadily, like a bottomless fountain, pouring out of her and wrapping around Titan’s feet. Gold light climbs up the Archaean, inch by inch, and settles into its skin like a glimmer. And wherever it touches makes the god look a little less like a stone statue and a little more  _ alive. _ The ankles follow, and then the legs, and Lunafreya’s voice never ceases.

She’s going to be at this for a while.

She’s also going to be  _ exhausted _ by the end. Holy moly, what in the worlds possessed her to think she should do this on her own? If she doesn’t collapse by the end of it Sora will be surprised. It’s a good thing he tagged along! Taking a nap down here would suck.

The light keeps up its slow climb. Sora glances around, figures that the princess will be safe for now, and decides to look around, see if there’s anything else interesting. Because the heat isn’t just overwhelming, it  _ itches, _ makes him antsy, like there’s something else here.

Makes sense.  _ How _ long has this god been standing here?

He picks a direction at random, and as long as he can hear the princess singing, he doesn’t think he’ll get lost. The rocks walls sort of narrow into a natural-made hallway and he meanders down that way. 

Lunafreya’s voice abruptly shifts direction, and he whips around… but he can still see her from here, standing on a ledge just above him with her trident out and one arm raised in supplication. She’s exactly where he left her, but something is causing her voice to echo funny along these chasms. 

Sora frowns slightly, and follows the sound of the echo.

‒‒‒

Royal Tombs are surprisingly plain things. Oh, the architecture is interesting enough, as Prompto is quick to point out ‒ graceful lines and curlicues, all marble and granite pillars and great arching ceilings. But they’re all identical, anonymous, even down to the generic “kingly” effigies used to mark the final resting place of kings and queens alike. Each one differs only in the Royal Arm it displays, as though their weapons were the only thing worth noting about them.

Noctis wouldn’t be able to stand it if his father was buried like this. It’s too impersonal, too… clean. Everything that made these people who they were, everything that isn’t “useful” to the next generation, is scrubbed away. That’s not how anyone should be remembered.

(Silver lining to King Regis being murdered by a traitor in his own ranks? Not even a little.)

The Axe of the Conqueror pierces his heart the same way the Sword of the Wise did, and Noctis doesn't know how to feel about that.

Neither do any of the others, from the looks of it. They all flinch even harder than he does when a ghostly weapon comes flying at him. He’s surprised every time it doesn’t hurt.

Not that it’s a  _ nice _ feeling, either. If anything it leaves him unnervingly vulnerable, with an eerie sensation of being stared at by hundreds of onlookers. And even though those invisible watchers seem to want something from him he isn’t sure he can give, it does nonetheless feel like being surrounded by family.

For now, Noctis chooses to take comfort in that.

‒

They exit the tunnels just in time to see Sir Ostium jogging towards them.

Noctis had met all three of the surviving Kingsglaive at some time or another. Nyx Ulric had been on and off his personal security detail more times than he could count, and Crowe Altius had made enough waves among the Glaive's mages for her to be formally introduced to the prince... but Libertus Ostium was one of those people who always seemed to be overlooked. He didn’t excel at any particular weapon, could work the king’s magic only passably, and always did only as much as he was asked to, no more and no less. 

The only time Noctis met the man was on his last day of high school, when Libertus had apparently traded shifts with Nyx for some reason or another. Noctis knew he would be scrutinized rather a lot by the press on this particular day, and was more concerned than usual with appearances ‒ not only his own, but those of his retinue. 

“Can you do something about that weird braid?” Noctis had asked, catching sight of Libertus in the mirror while fiddling nervously his tie. “I mean, it’s cool, but. Maybe not something that’ll offend the school’s dress code or whatever.”

He mostly remembers the way all emotion drained out of the Glaive’s previously amicable face, more than what he actually said in response.

Ignis later drew him aside. “The people of Galahd add braids to their hair when in mourning,” he said gently. “One braid for each loved one lost. The looped braid, with two strands joined seamlessly at the ends to give the illusion of interminability, is very difficult to craft. It signifies that the wearer mourns too many people to count.”

Looking back on it now, Noctis isn’t a hundred percent sure he ever apologized for that.

“Your Highness,” Libertus says as he approaches. At the same time, Noctis’s cell phone rings. He frowns and picks it up.

“Yeah?”

“Finally picked up,” Cor’s voice answers. “Thought I’d lost another king. Did Ostium tell you I was trying to call?”

Noctis makes a slight face. ‘Cor the Restless’ might need to be traded for ‘Cor the Impatient’. “No, we just got out of the tunnels at the same time as he arrived. Found the Axe, by the way.”

“Good to hear. I have a task for you, concerning a new Imperial blockade west to Duscae. If Ostium found you, he can fill you in on the details.”

Cor is gone with a slight  _ click _ , and Noctis hangs up. Definitely impatient.

“What was that about?” Gladio asks.

Noctis raises a questioning eyebrow at Libertus by way of reply.

“Oh, you know,” Libertus says with a shrug. “People to see, bases to burn.” 

The corner of Noct’s mouth quirks up of its own accord, because he’s been nursing the same quietly vindictive attitude like a hangover for the past day and a half. “I think we’re on the same page.”

‒‒‒ 

The rock walls turn from natural barriers into purposefully placed brick, and then Sora finds himself facing two stone doors, lovingly carved. There are words written along the edges in a language he cannot read ‒ not much of a surprise, he’s seen a lot of those. His eyes fall upon the door handles and he gives them a tug ‒ once, twice. Locked. 

Well, he has the answer to  _ that, _ doesn’t he?

The Kingdom Key materializes in his hand with a flash, and the  _ itching _ feeling he has intensifies, so much so that he  _ sneezes. _ Definitely something here. The lock turns with a quiet click, and the door swings open on smooth hinges. 

Cool air rushes out and gives him a brief respite from the oppressive heat. When his eyes adjust, the first thing he notices is a statue of a man in repose, elegant sword held tightly to his chest, displayed in the center of the circular room. The floor, what there is of it, is patterned like a many-pointed star, and the domed ceiling shows constellations that brighten and dim in intervals, a faint bioluminescence of some kind that provides unsteady lighting to the strange room and offsets the stale, dead air. Densely patterned mosaics line the walls, along with more of that strange writing. 

As he steps closer, footsteps echoing against stone walls, the itches turn to tingles down his spine. The whole area reminds him of the secret place back home, or the waterways under Traverse Town ‒ too many images to draw the eye, abstract yet significant. There’s a story here, he just doesn’t have the context to parse it.

Part of the floor is caved in, just beyond the statue in the center. In the faint light of the carved stars, it’s impossible to tell what’s at the bottom ‒ in fact, from here it looks as though it  _ has _ no bottom. He looks as hard as he is able, but cannot detect even the faintest glimmer of light. He trips against the statue in his attempt. It’s face, with a slim nose and square jaw carefully shaped, looks as if it is only sleeping, and Sora jumps at the sudden shudder that crawls over him.

He rubs at his arms. Haunted grave? Probably. He turns to leave, wondering if Lunafreya is nearly finished, when his keyblade tugs at him.

His heart sinks for a split second. “Oh,  _ c’mon, _ really?”

More tugging, very insistent.

Sora considers, then rolls his eyes. “Alright, show me what you've got.”

It materializes in his hands again, and he lets his heart guide him to where it needs to point. Which is the big, gaping hole in the floor, apparently. It's just as abyssal as ever, but light gathers on the tip of his keyblade, illuminating…  _ something. _ A path?

There’s an earth-shattering  _ roar _ over his head, the walls of the tomb shaking and crumbling and  _ oh crap _ the world is  _ moving. _ Sora turns to run back the way he came but  _ nope _ some kind of pillars encircle the whole freaking thing like fingers  _ with him still inside it  _ ‒

He loses his balance as the tomb is destroyed and rolls on top of the effigy, squawking in terror when he  _ swears _ he sees the face blink at him once. There’s more roaring, loud enough to make his ears ring and his ribs rattle, and then air is rushing past him. 

Oh.

Those pillars actually  _ were _ fingers. He’s been picked up by Mr. Archean, tomb and all. That explains a lot.

Titan roars directly at Sora, who does his best to hang on in the hot wind. Then the world is moving again, except it’s actually Titan moving Sora, the god pulling his arm back for a ‒ uh oh.

Sora doesn’t wait. He takes a flying leap out of the pile of rubble in Titan’s massive hand, sees the effigy thrown like a baseball to land somewhere near the crater’s entrance. Then he’s got other things to worry about, and carefully spreads out in a dive. Falling has  _ never _ been a problem for him, and it isn’t now, using other boulders in the air that Titan has apparently thrown around in his temper tantrum to leapfrog back to the ground.

Lunafreya is a smudge of white against all the black and dark brown of the surrounding area, and also not where he left her, running for her life  _ away  _ from the angry god. He lands neatly next to her and helps her up as she stumbles.

She shoots him a look that makes him want to pop into non-existence. “What did you  _ do? _ ”

“I don’t know!” He throws his free hand up in the air, tugging Lunafreya along to safety. “All I did was find this tomb that my keyblade was being weird about! I was about to  _ leave _ when Titan decided to be a  _ two year old! _ ”

She stumbles along in his grasp, breathing heavily. It’s not just the heat anymore ‒ he can see how waking Titan has drained her. Sora looks around briefly, then tugs her upright. “C’mon, we need to  _ go! _ ”

“I’m not finished here,” Lunafreya protests.

“He’s  _ awake, _ isn’t he?!”

“He needs to agree to ‒” She’s cut off as a few - nope, a  _ lot _ of boulders come crashing down around them. Lunafreya stumbles again, though keeps her footing this time, and Sora starts eyeing up the distance it would take to punch Titan in his stupid face.

He purses his lips. That’s a  _ lot _ of vertical space to deal with, even with his awesome jumping skills. And with the princess down here…

Lunafreya sees him looking at her ‒ frowns slightly, then nods. “I’m going to higher ground.  _ Please _ don’t do anything too reckless?”

He grins, one of the  _ big _ ones he gives when someone’s scared, that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle up. “I’ll be just fine.”

She gives him a look that reminds him  _ eerily _ of Kairi seeing right through him, but huffs and scrambles up the nearest boulder faster than he thought she could. 

Which turns out to be just fast enough, as Sora barely rolls out of the way of the Archean trying to  _ step on him. _

At least this Titan is  _ almost _ as slow as the one he's used to. That's a plus.

Okay then.

Sora crouches and turns back toward the retreating foot, swinging his keyblade around as he does so. It’s like smacking a rock with a steel bar, but he expected that, and focuses on landing multiple hits rather than landing anything too solid. Hit ‘im til he trips, then break his face. It’s formulaic.

Titan seems to have not gotten the memo about how this fight is supposed to go when he straight-up  _ kicks _ Sora into a cliffside. There was no windup, so it doesn’t pack a lot of force, but it still  _ hurts _ . 

Sora slides back to the ground, gasping, and reaches for a potion when even breathing hurts. Then he starts running again because Titan is  _ still _ throwing rocks at him!

Right. Okay. He can do this. Big giant rocks being thrown at him? Old hat. He can  _ totally _ do this, nevermind that Titan is something like three times bigger than the Rock Titan on Olympus. And apparently a lot smarter. 

Rock for brains is  _ still _ rocks for brains, and Sora uses his speed to get out of Titan’s line of sight, running around the edge of the crater. The giant torso twists and turns and bends, looking for his comparatively small form. That gives him enough time to put a hand to his heart and  _ reach. _

The dry heat of this place emanates from above and below, similar to the heat of another world, another time, felt through fur and rough paw-pads. Rocks climbing high on both sides of a valley, with a horizon stretching on into forever. Racing against the sunset across the plains.

A roar echoes in his ribs before it reaches his ears and he  _ smiles _ as fire spins around his form. The summon, the link in his heart, connects, and Simba appears before him ‒ not as his longtime friend but as living fire, his eyes molten gold. Briefly, Sora reaches out to pat the full-grown lion, his hand sinking into the red flames. It doesn’t hurt even a little, and Simba closes his eyes in a feline smile. They nod simultaneously, and Sora swings his leg over Simba’s back, the ephemeral flames warm and solid under him. 

He grins.  _ Now _ we’re talking. 

‒‒‒

The raid on the Norduscaen Blockade is a well-planned one. Noctis and Cor go one way; Libertus, Monica, and the others go another. MTs are out in force, but it’s impossible to cover the base in its entirety when construction has barely started. Noct picks them off one at a time while Cor covers his back, and with every metallic  _ crunch _ of armor plating and smashed robotics, Noctis feels a little less despair and a little more anger. They can do this. They’ll have to be careful and it might take years, but Noctis can take back what was stolen from his father. He has to.

There’s almost no resistance because the others are drawing it all out on  _ their _ end. That plan comes back to bite them when their two groups meet in the middle, but they’ve prepared for that too. They’ve lead them to a blind alley within their own encampment and pick them off like fish in a barrel. Damn Nifs never stood a chance.

A shadow passes overhead.

“The hell’s a  _ dropship _ doing here?” Gladio says, scowling at the sky.

Cor frowns. “Someone must’ve gotten an alert out in time before we ‒”

The ship lands with a rumble. Then, over the damn  _ loudspeakers _ scattered around the half-built fortress, comes a new voice.

“Well, well… If it isn’t  _ Cor the Immortal. _ So. You survived the Citadel. But you won’t survive what  _ I _ have in store for you! It’s past time your  _ ‘legend’ _ came to an end.”

“What kind of lame-ass JRPG does this asshole think he’s in?” Prompto mutters beside him. Noctis snorts. The scripted, unprompted gloating certainly fits.

Everyone in Insomnia knows the story of Cor Leonis and Loqi Tummelt, the younger son of a middling Gralean noble house desperate to prove himself to a world that honestly didn’t care. Loqi thought he could make a name for himself by killing the one agent in the Lucian forces that everyone thought nigh-unkillable. Cor, already nicknamed  _ the Immortal _ , took one look at Loqi’s pathetic attempts and laughed in his face. 

Cor could have killed Loqi then and there, but chose to let him go. Thus, rather than being the one to fell the legendary Immortal, Loqi Tummelt became the one who was so weak that Cor took pity on him. Idiot’s held a grudge ever since.

The bay door of the drop ship opens, and a MA-X Cuirass model mech emerges and unfolds. It’s impressive-looking enough, all shiny metal casing and hissing steam. But there’s exposed pneumatic cable hanging behind its legs and all across its underside, and giant gaps in its plate armor show the delicate electronics inside just begging to be impaled. 

“Done in a minute?” Gladio smirks.

Noct dismisses his Engine Blade and exchanges it for a polearm. “With time to spare.”

“Just gimme a target,” Prompto adds, leveling his pistol.

Ignis says, “I would, but they’re painfully obvious in this case. I should think even you can figure it out.”

Prompto tilts his head slightly, says, “Kneecaps it is,” and fires.

One of the mech’s legs seizes up at the knee joint as soon as it tries to move, a piercer round lodged in the gears. Noctis warps in and slashes at the same joint, causing it to nearly topple over before it auto-balances. The fucking loudspeaker is  _ still _ on, so they can all hear Loqi’s frustrated muttering from within the mecha as he tries to right himself. 

MTs are pouring out from the dropship too now. Ignis barks, “Gladio, cover!” and darts in close while the Shield distracts them with his greatsword. 

The four of them automatically split into teams of two, he and Prompto handling the ridiculously vulnerable mech while Gladio and Ignis mow down the MTs. Cor jumps from group to group, making hits to give them all space to breathe and regroup when needed, while Libertus and Monica keep to the sidelines and pick off any stragglers.

Noctis slashes at a bunch of pneumatic cables partially hidden behind the ‘hip’ joint of the mech and grins as Loqi’s screeching gets frantic over the loudspeaker. He warps away to not get squished by the disabled machine. This is almost  _ fun. _

‒‒‒

Simba’s haunches tense, and then they go soaring upward to land  _ hard _ on Titan’s knee, fire and force impacting on the spot and causing the god to stumble. Simba leaps again and digs claws made of fire into the great being’s side, roaring and scorching all the way up his torso. Titan  _ tries _ to swat them, only for Simba to leap and rebound off the giant hand, landing on Titan’s shoulder. 

It takes nearly all of Simba’s time with Sora to  _ get _ here, but the King of the Pridelands doesn’t leave without attacking Titan’s face in the only way a giant cat made of  _ fire _ can do, claws and teeth giving the god a new nostril, before exploding into a meteor of fire and power, leaving one last black eye for Titan to deal with. 

Sora smirks, pleased with himself. He  _ did _ want to punch Titan in the face, after all. And now that he’s up here, he can keep up the momentum that Simba left him, leaping and smacking combo after combo into Titan’s face.

“This. Is. What. You. Get. For. Throwing.  _ A tantrum! _ ” he punctuates with every hit of his keyblade. Until Titan  _ bellows _ , breath a gale in and of itself, smelling of dust and sulfur, and Sora goes flipping head over teakettle away from the god.

He smacks upside down against a wall, thoroughly disoriented, his back telling him in no uncertain terms he is  _ not _ to do that again, thank you very much. And opens his eyes to Titan’s massive hand coming towards him, looking to swat him like a fly on the wall.

_ ‘Oh shit.’ _ Sora swallows, gets his keyblade in something approximating a parry.

“ _ TITAN! _ ”

Lunafreya’s elegant voice echoes across the crater, louder than Sora thought possible, and an accompanying blast of light makes Titan shield his eyes. It gives Sora enough time to scramble haphazardly up the cliff face, pop an ether, and cast a small Cure spell. When he’s able, he looks for the source of the voice.

On a high rise, almost eye-level with Eos’s god of the earth, Princess Lunafreya  _ shines _ with power.

And she.

Is.

_ Angry _ .

“I have awakened the youngest of the Astrals, that I may forge a covenant and aid in the True King’s quest to purge our star of its blight!” she says, voice rising easily above the wind and shaking earth. “I did not anticipate he would pick a fight with a  _ child! _ ”

Titan  _ roars _ something incomprehensible, a noise that is plainly speech of some kind but made of nothing but crashes and shrieks.

Whatever it is, the Oracle can somehow understand it, because she looks down at Sora, frowns, and returns her gaze to Titan. “I know not of what you speak. The prophecy of Light is in motion, all else is irrelevant!”

Sora climbs and climbs, fight put on hold while Lunafreya verbally bitch slaps Titan. The power she’s wielding is awe-inspiring, at a level he’s never seen before, even with six Princesses of Light in one place. 

“There  _ is _ no other way!” she cries ‒ though it’s more a refutation of something Titan must have said than anything else. “Noctis is on the appointed path, and he  _ will _ prove himself worthy! Grant him your power when he calls on it, I beseech you!”

For a long moment, Titan says nothing. Sora scrambles the rest of the way up to where Lunafreya stands, errant wind whipping at her hair and skirt while she herself stands firm. He goes to stand beside her, to defend her if this all goes sideways, but she puts an arm out, not even looking at him. Sora is surprised, but stands down.

At last Titan speaks once more, a low rumble of shifting earth. 

Lunafreya nods. “I will.”

Something changes in the air, in the fabric of this world. Sora gets the sense that, if he viewed this moment from outside, he would see a shockwave effect from the zenith of the world down to its nadir, through every being and back again ‒ all filtered through Lunafreya’s light. Sora thinks distantly that it shouldn’t be possible to channel that kind of power and survive… But he had seen Princesses halt darkness at its door, bring people back from the brink of death. If anyone could, then surely, surely...

Lunafreya’s knees buckle.

Sora barely catches her in time, such is his general awe at… all of this, really. But it’s all gone in a second, replaced and eclipsed by shock and anger. “What did you  _ do _ to her!” he cries in Titan’s direction.

The Oracle gulps down air. “I’m alright,” she gasps. “The Rite is complete.”

“ _ That _ was the Rite??”

She staggers to her feet. “We have to go.”

“But ‒”

The earth shakes as Titan  _ roars, _ and the sound seeks the one fated to bring Light back to this world.

‒‒‒

Noctis grins, because even though he kind of expected this fight to be easy, the way Loqi is bitching about losing is almost pathetic. He makes one final swipe, digging his spear into a mess of machinery, and warps back out before the mech can collapse on top of him.

Then the headache strikes him from nowhere, slamming into his brain like a knife, and Noctis falls out of the sky mid-warp. 

It’s poorly timed, and he tries to right himself from fifty feet in the freakin’ sky, tries to warp back to the ground. But another wave of pain strikes, radiating from the backs of his eyes, and all he ends up doing is throwing his weapon.

“Noct!” Ignis shouts. 

“Highness!” That one’s Cor.

He summons a dagger, tries to throw it, but isn’t quick enough. The ground rises up to meet him first.

The King of Lucis hits the concrete shoulder-first with a sickening  _ crack. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Luna's little preview of the song for waking Leviathan comes from ["Give Yourself to Love"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stMm4-y0LYk), by Kate Wolf. It's not the entire song, but those particular lyrics, as well as others, struck me as appropriate.
> 
> (Sora doesn't know it's literal.)
> 
> -
> 
> Isis: -links video-  
> Isis: Well, now we know where Prompto’s rambling habit comes from. These two make a great case for Nature vs. Nurture...  
> 45 minutes later…  
> Ryuu: -dumps… 80% of Episode Ardyn in the trash-
> 
> No, for real, I can work with this. There’s a lot of tidbits in there that I can use, particularly regarding Ifrit, Bahamut, and Aera. But the rest? Is honestly rather cringy? And I know, #endcringeculture2019, but Ardyn had 2000 years in solitary confinement to go crazy. Saying he didn’t hate the world until after he got out is just… ugh. And they STILL didn’t tell us who Izunia was, so I’m keeping my headcanon, dammit.
> 
> Side note: Do you have ANY IDEA how _badly_ I wanted Besithia’s voice to be Robbie Daymond doing his best if-Prompto-were-evil impression? _DO YOU??_
> 
> Isis: -stares at Episode Ardyn- Seriously? This is what you’re doing? You misunderstand your character so badly that he doesn’t turn ‘evil’ until after his imprisonment? And what the fuck is this about the Adagium? God, we’ve got to un-fuck canon so badly.  
> -insert BNHA Aizawa stomp gif here-


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't fear heights. Fear falling.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Truckin’ along, stuff happening, people groups moving… 
> 
> Y’know that feel when a scene just isn’t working, so you completely rewrite it from a different character’s perspective? Yeah, that happened like 8 times this chapter.

At first, Iris sat in the front of the car with Dustin, with Riku and Kairi lounging in back. That arrangement got old fast as Riku found himself repeatedly caught in the middle of Iris and Kairi chatting with one another about _everything_. To Kairi’s delight and Riku’s mild horror, the two girls get along like a house on fire. Riku, rather pointedly, stands by his original assessment that the pair of them are like long lost twins.

Kairi finds the whole situation pretty hilarious, all told. But the truth is that Riku always has been, and always will be, waaaay too introverted to be at ground zero of this kind of chatter.

So she takes pity on him, and suggests that he trade seats with Iris. The rest of the drive proceeds much more smoothly, with Jared and Riku silent in front, and Iris and Kairi excitedly making friends in the back.

“...originally made it for all three of us, but it kind of wound up being Sora’s. I think he uses it as a keychain sometimes.”

“How the heck do you put holes in a seashell?” Iris wonders.

“I used an awl, but there’s probably an actual tool for it somewhere.”

“A what?”

“It’s a bookbinding tool,” Kairi elaborates. “For drilling holes through paper. Ruined mine trying to get it through five thalassa shells, but I like to think it was worth it. Plus it was my first time trying a sewing project, so I mostly just used what I had available.”

Iris laughs. “So you’re telling me you bind books too?”

“Just short scrapbooks, but yeah.” She’s got a whole shelf of them in her room at home ‒ early ones clumsy with stiff cardboard pages, later ones more detailed, with hand-written summaries signifying what each trinket meant to her at the time. Memories are important.

“She draws too,” Riku puts in, smirking.

Kairi winces, stung. “ _I_ do not,” she corrects. “My sister draws.”

Riku glances back at her, and she cannot quite keep his gaze. Naminé is not Kairi’s sister. She is Kairi’s other half, not an imitation but not quite independent, a pale existence from which she somehow made miracles. She is a ghost of a girl, captive and abused, who rose to become a prime mover in Sora’s life and safety, an act which Kairi cannot thank her enough for. She hurt and loved and bled and laughed, and set every one of them on the path they’re on now ‒ to rescue the ones they lost, whether or not they knew them.

Kairi didn’t know Naminé, not really. She met her only once, maybe twice, and it seemed like just the act of standing in Kairi’s presence made her slip a little more away. When she returned her heart to Kairi’s, everyone thought it was the right thing, but it _wasn’t._

It really, really wasn’t.

“You doodle,” Riku amends. Then, quieter: “Talent had to come from somewhere, right?”

_(a whisper from the darkness ‒ “Trust yourself!”)_

Naminé is not Kairi’s sister. Yet how can Kairi not feel a kinship with her?

“I take no credit for Naminé’s accomplishments,” she murmurs. It wouldn’t be right.

“You should,” says Riku, gently.

“Yeah,” Iris says, smiling. “I’ve always wanted to learn crafty stuff like that. Like sewing my own stuffed animals. I have _always wanted_ to make… I dunno, a moogle or something! Oh!” she bounces in her seat excitedly. “If you taught your sister, could you teach me?”

“I didn’t really ‒” Kairi stumbles over an explanation, but honestly there isn’t one. Riku’s looking at her again, arching an eyebrow at her in the rearview mirror. Kairi heaves a sigh and faces Iris, smiling. “Y’know what? Sure. Let’s do it.”

Who knows? Being a sister might take some practice. Kairi wants to get this one absolutely right, when the time comes.

“Yesss!” Iris cheers. “Okay, what do I need to start with?”

The car pulls through a long tunnel; Kairi rattles off lists of materials while Iris enthuses about different projects she can’t wait to try. When sunlight hits them again, the edges of the city are finally in view.

Kairi’s attention is dragged from girl-talk to the window, where she gapes at the skyline, taking every little detail. “Oh, _wow._ ”

Kairi’s never seen a real city before Lestallum. Insomnia didn’t really feel like it counted, given how on-fire it was while she was there, and she was a bit too pumped on adrenaline to take in the sights anyway. She does so here and now as they drive past Lestallum’s outskirts and and search for parking near to the town’s main thoroughfare. There are tall, swaying palm trees that remind Kairi comfortingly of home, planted in neat rows along the roads and sidewalks. Structures of all different heights crowd into the available space, crumbling mortar held asynchronously together with modern steel and glass. Billboards line the rooftops, as do rows and trails of faded blue piping, and the skyline is marred by industrial smoke.

It’s a little overwhelming.

Back on the Islands ‒ and probably even before that, little of that time though she remembers ‒ Kairi was always a wanderer, tending to run off to examine whatever caught her attention without a word to whoever she happened to be with. Sora was her partner in crime for internal expeditions, excavating every nook and cranny of their tiny islands to uncover what was hidden in plain sight, while Riku theorized with her about what might be _beyond_ the horizon and out of their current reach. They would travel as far as they dared in their small canoes, searching the surrounding sea for a mythical town strung on cables in the sky, which was a popular children’s story at the time.

Suddenly she understands a lot more of Riku’s old eagerness to leave home. The entire car ride here, he had kept his eyes mostly fixed out the window, hungrily taking in the unfamiliar sights. Kairi wonders suddenly if other worlds are as enormous as this one seems to be. The prospect of getting to know this city is exhilarating. The prospect of going even further is… daunting, but within reach. So much more than she ever thought possible is within Kairi’s reach now.

Riku’s not looking around now, though. He’s looking at Kairi, wearing the wide, eager grin of someone delighted to finally share a long-held passion.

“This place looks _awesome,_ ” Kairi squees, just a little bit.

“Wanna check it out?” Iris interjects, grinning.

“Hell yeah!”

“Children,” Dustin’s dry voice admonishes. Kairi had honestly forgotten the guy was there, and he was _driving._ “We ought to get settled into the hotel before anything else. I must see to the area’s security before you can go wandering.”

“Alriiiiight,” Iris sighs dejectedly. Then stage-whispers, “See why I asked you guys along?”

‒‒

Iris leads the group into town. She watches with amusement as Kairi and Riku look around and stare at _everything_ , but she’s honestly no better. It’s her first time outside the Wall, too.

“Hey Kairi, check it out,” she hears Riku whisper, leaning down toward Kairi and pointing to the network of wires and cable cars suspended over the city. “It’s Cable Town.”

Kairi shoves at him playfully. “Shut _up._ ”

“What’s that?” Iris asks.

“An in-joke, don’t mind him.” Kairi picks up her pace to catch up with Iris and Dustin, leaving Riku to trail in their wake with a smirk on his face. “So where are we headed?” she asks.

“Dustin said the Leville, right?”

“Miss Iris! Miss Kairi!” a child’s voice interrupts.

Iris turns. “Talcott?”

The boy rushes out from the street to their left and tackles Iris around the middle with a delighted whoop. “You made it you made it you made it!”

Dustin sighs, beleaguered. “Talcott, please. Mind your manners.”

“Oh! Right!” The boy disentangles himself to stand very straight and proper a few feet back, and bows. “Welcome to the city, Lady Amicitia!”

Iris giggles. “Someone’s been practicing.”

Talcott grins brightly, then turns to face the others. “And a _very_ good day to you as well, Miss Kairi, Mister ‒ uh…”

“Just Riku is fine,” Riku says, sounding amused.

“Sure thing, Mister Riku!”

Riku huffs out a laugh.

Iris offers Talcott a fistbump, which he enthusiastically reciprocates. “Gonna show us around town, little man?” To Kairi and Riku she adds: “He used to live here with his parents before he moved to Insomnia.”

Talcott shakes his head. “Grandpa said we have to get settled in first.” Then he straightens again. “Right this way, if you please,” he intones, trying very hard to keep a straight face.

Iris can’t quite keep the smile from forming as she complies.

Talcott leads them down a few streets to a small plaza around a tiered fountain decorated with palms. Surrounding it are a few shops, the odd street musician, and an elaborate building of gothic design that announces itself with incongruously bright lights as _The Leville._

A familiar elderly gentleman is waiting for them inside.

“Jared!” Iris shouts gleefully, and hugs him tightly. She feels an arm ‒ the one not occupied with his cane ‒ wrap solidly around her shoulders, and releases a breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding. “I’m so glad you made it here safely,” she whispers.

Jared chuckles, a vibration Iris can feel. “Not to worry, my girl,” he says. His hand moves to rest on the top of Iris’s head, and she pulls back slightly. He smiles down at her. “I trust your journey went smoothly?”

“Dustin drove us all the way here with no breaks and put up with us chattering the whole way and I think he probably wants a nap,” Iris says immediately.

“And I don’t suppose you’ve assumed this because you’d rather part with his chaperonage as well?” Jared asks archly.

Iris bites her lip, trying to look innocent. From the way her longtime guardian lifts an eyebrow at her, she probably fails spectacularly.

“We need to get you settled in, at the least,” Jared says, not unkindly. “Then we’ll see what measures can be taken to allow you some freedom.”

“I hadn’t observed any hostiles on the city’s perimeter,” Dustin puts in. “Imperials have primarily centered on their old bases of operation, but that could change any time. I’ll feel better once your living quarters are secure, Lady Iris.”

“Oh!” Kairi makes a surprised noise from behind them. Iris turns to see her and Riku conferring over something. What are they holding…?

Riku looks up as well. “Would it help if Kairi and I scouted the city?” he asks. “We were planning on doing that anyway, to figure out where Sora might come in and ask people to keep an eye out. No reason we can’t share what we find with you guys.”

Dustin looks the pair of them over. “Do you know what to look for?”

“I’ve gotten pretty good at sniffing out ill intent,” Riku says dryly.

Kairi elbows him. “The locals here will be talking about what happened in Insomnia, right?” she says to Dustin. “All we have to do is listen to the rumor mill and investigate anything that seems promising.”

“And map out the city at the same time,” Riku adds.

Iris blinks. When Kairi elbowed Riku there, Iris saw she was holding something blocky and just vaguely familiar. Then it clicks, and she about jumps in excitement. “Ooh! You can send pictures of anything suspicious, and keep in touch by phone!” She pulls the burner phone Cindy gave her out of a pocket. “Can’t believe I didn’t think of this before… Okay, my number is ‒”

“Don’t bother with that one,” Jared interrupts. “I’ve got someone working on a secure line for you as we speak. You can trade numbers once you have the new one.”

“Alright, alright,” Iris pouts. Then, at Kairi, asks, “What are your guys’s numbers, so I can call you as soon as I get it?”

Riku looks lost. “Our… numbers?”

Iris nods. “Phone numbers.”

Kairi and Riku look at each other, then back at Iris, both of them looking completely baffled.

Iris looks between them both, eyebrows raised. “Your _cell phones?_ ”

Riku _finally_ glances down at the weird-looking phone in his hand that he and Kairi were bent over earlier ‒ their phones actually look to be a matching pair, which is seriously adorable ‒ and blinks. “Oh!” he says, finally clicking. “Sorry, I… completely blanked for a sec.” He begins tapping and scrolling through it. “Uhh… Here, I think this is right.” He squints. “Maybe?”

Iris rolls her eyes and steps over beside Riku. He shows her his screen, pointing to a thirteen-digit number. It looks more like a serial code than a phone number. Even weirder, the last digit keeps adjusting itself, flicking between 3 and E. She looks askance at him. “Have you _ever_ owned a phone before?” she jokes.

“Honestly, no,” says Riku. He isn’t joking.

Kairi’s frowning at her own device. “I think it might be a compatibility thing? Our friend gave us these ‒ the way he explained it, they’re more like long-range walkie-talkies?”

“ _Very_ long-range,” Riku adds.

Jared sweeps in. “Iris, my dear, I really must insist that we see to your security before anything else. Dustin, come with us please. And Talcott my boy, do see that Iris’s friends get a proper look at the town.” And with that he draws Iris toward the stairs.

“Oh, alright,” She cranes her neck back toward her friends. “Take pictures anyway! You can show them to me in person later!”

“Yeah, I do know they take pictures. Ienzo was pretty enthusiastic about that part…” Kairi looks thoughtful, then glances at Riku. “You think he’d be able to make them interface with whatever these people have?”

“Uh. Is that a good idea?”

“Why wouldn’t it be?”

Riku looks like he can think of a couple reasons, which is… a little hurtful, if Iris is honest. But eventually he shrugs and says, “No harm in asking, I guess.”

Iris waves, a little sadly. “I’ll see you guys later.”

‒

Jared closes the door of Iris’s carefully selected apartment suite with a sigh, and smiles ruefully at her. “While your enthusiasm is one of your best qualities, do exercise more caution in these dark times. I don’t like the way your new friends hesitated to hand over their contact information.”

Iris waves him off. “They probably just have a different carrier or something! You heard them, they’re gonna work it out.”

“Still…” Jared frowns.

“Kairi saved my life,” Iris says firmly. “I trust them. And they may not fully trust us, but they have no reason to. They’re only here because I asked.” She’s convincing herself, more than anything, but it does help ease the slight pit in her stomach.

“If it helps, the Marshall cleared them,” Dustin puts in. “Not with a formal investigation, we don’t have the resources for that. But he did personally approve of the entire venture.”

Jared stares for a moment, then nods. “I suppose that does put my mind at ease. If you’ll excuse us?”

“Of course.” Dustin nods, and bows out.

Iris spends a moment just breathing. Then she flops gracelessly onto a corner of the giant bed.

Jared sits down next to her, hands clasped on the top of his cane. “How are you feeling, my dear? Truly?”

Her mouth works for a few seconds, just processing the enormity of that question. Then she rakes a hand through her hair and groans. “Can we get a tv in here or _something_ while you guys do your security thing? I _need_ to distract myself. Like, NEED need.”

“That bad, hm?”

Boredom is Iris’s lifelong enemy, as her friends and family can well attest. That way lies madness ‒ or anxiety, at the very least. She’d rather chase a cat than sit still.

Jared chuckles. “Unfortunately, they mostly use radios outside of Insomnia. I’d suggest wifi, but that’s off-limits until Dustin returns with your new phone.” He considers. “Though you could make outgoing calls to phones that are already secure. Touch base with your brother and his friends, perhaps.”

A sudden image of Noct, hand outstretched and smiling at her, flashes through Iris’s mind, and she groans. _Not_ the distraction she had in mind. “Right,” she mutters, deflating. “Because if ever there was a time to indulge in a stupid crush on prince charming, it’s now.”

Jared quirks a knowing half-smile. “I believe I said your brother, but the prince is another valid option.”

“Like he needs _me_ around right now…”

“Prince Noctis is your friend, and always will be,” Jared says, frowning.

“Exactly. He will always be my _friend._ So I gotta… I dunno. Cut my losses! Seek out other options!” Because that’s always worked _so_ well in the past. Ugh, she really is hopeless.

Jared hums. “I suppose that boy Riku is rather handsome,” he says eventually.

Iris rolls her eyes. “Yes, _dad,_ he’s thoughtful and muscular and completely dreamy. He’s also attached to Kairi at the hip.” Though the way Kairi talks about Sora is enough to give that idea pause. And yet Riku is just as determined as Kairi to track Sora down, so who even knows what’s up with that situation.

Not that Noctis isn’t just as categorically unavailable. But he doesn’t really… _talk_ about Lady Lunafreya, for all that he jumped at the chance to see her in person again. The fantasy of running away to escape an arranged marriage is an old one, after all, one that Iris has entertained more and more in recent weeks. Up until, well, everything.

“I don’t imagine your father will approve of a foreign boy anyway,” Jared chuckles ‒ then stops abruptly, realizing what he just said.

All the wind goes out of her sails at once. “I don’t want to talk about dad,” Iris whispers.

Jared nods, and pulls Iris by her shoulder in for a hug. She lets him, feeling small, and tucks her head just under his chin.

“When I say that the prince will always be your friend,” he says gently, “I mean that he will always be happy to speak with you, crush or no crush. So if speaking with him is the distraction you need, then do so, and don’t worry about what he might think about it.” He pulls away from her to look her in the face. “Okay?”

Iris nods with a faint smile. “Yeah. Thanks Jared.”

He presses a kiss to her forehead. “Get some rest. Make your call. I’ll be downstairs if you need anything.”

“Sure.”

Jared takes his leave, and Iris spends several minutes staring at her phone and just wondering what to say.

 _‘Heya, Noct! So if you’re still alive does that mean Lady Lunafreya is too? And if she’s not, how would you rate me as a potential replacement fianc_ é _? Scale of one to ten.’_

_‘Sorry to hear about your dad, Noct. I know you loved him a lot more than I loved mine.’_

_‘Good afternoon, ex-Prince, now-King Noctis Lucis Caelum CXIV. Would it please Your Majesty to run from all your responsibilities and drive away with me into the sunset? Because I really, really want to do that.’_

She sighs.

In the end she decides to keep it simple. Nothing serious, nothing important, just small talk about arriving in Lestallum and inviting him to visit whenever he gets the chance. Should be easy enough.

Only the call goes straight to voicemail.

She frowns, and tries again. Same thing, no rings or anything to indicate Noct has refused or missed the call. Only a sterile invitation to leave a message after the beep. Is his phone dead?

Iris doesn’t leave a message, but calls her brother instead. She gets a dial tone from that one, but Gladdy doesn’t pick up, and that eventually goes to voicemail too.

Anxiety curdles in her gut, but she tamps it down. Gladdy often leaves his phone on silent. This is normal. She fires off a few texts asking for a status update. Then she fires off a few more.

Time passes at an astonishingly slow rate, if the digital clock on the nightstand is anything to go by. Iris _fidgets._ She can’t call Prompto until Dustin gets back with her new phone, and she doesn’t know Ignis’s number by heart. Cor, maybe? He might know what’s up. She really shouldn’t call him when it’s not an emergency though...

It takes all of ten more minutes for her resolve to break down, but Cor doesn’t answer either. She calls Gladio twice more, to no effect. Then a single text message from Cor’s number appears: _2418._

It’s Lucian military code for _target unable to respond, hold your position_.

Iris’s stomach drops.

\---

By now, Cor’s had time to get a measure of the Prince and his retinue.

He’s trained Gladiolus and Ignis for most of their lives, and he has seen with pride that they react under stress exactly the way he taught them to. They complement each other well and are most comfortable working as a unit, each covering the other’s weaknesses.

Argentum was initially more concerning, but he seems to be adapting well. What little combat training he did receive apparently sank in startlingly well, although he has a bad habit of getting much closer to the fighting than any gunman should. It’s hard to tell him off for it though, given the source of his eagerness. Kid’s got more dedication than most Glaives.

Noctis himself is emotionally driven but ultimately has a good head on his shoulders, and magic in his bloodline makes him capable and versatile in combat. He is able to switch weapons in a blink without being weighed down by them, and is aware enough of his surroundings to phase through most anything that hits him.

So Cor doesn’t know exactly how the Prince somehow lost control of his warp enough to fall right out of the sky, but by now he thinks he knows these boys well enough to anticipate how they’ll react to the situation.

He’s proven quite wrong in approximately two and a half seconds.

For starters, Noctis won’t or can’t right himself enough to warp back down to the ground, and connects with the concrete with a smash of broken bones. The mecha that Noctis _thoroughly_ disabled mere seconds before wavers dangerously, about to topple over right on top of him.

About six people are racing in the prince’s direction, but Sir Ostium is closest. He scoops Noctis off the ground, leaving behind an unsettling smear of blood, and keeps running. For a moment it looks like he won’t make it out of the fallen mech’s blast radius, but then Gladio intercepts the hit, planting his shield on the ground and sheltering all three of them as the machine explodes in a hail of fire.

Libertus pelts out of range, Noctis in his arms. Cor can’t see Gladio past the debris yet, but Ignis reaches the prince, curatives already in hand, and Cor turns his attention back to the MTs still surrounding them. They’re battery soldiers, sturdier than the common axemen, but Monica knows exactly how to pry off their shields. Cor follows her up with sweeping katana strikes that take out three and four at a time.

There’s a _bang_ to his right, where the mecha fell. A hatch has opened from its inner casing, and _Loqi godsdamned Tummelt_ emerges from its interior, barely singed and holding some kind of gutted machine part.

“I suppose you think you’re clever, don’t you?” the boy says, and really, it’s a testament to how much he has learned absolutely _nothing_ these past six years.

“Only compared to some,” says Cor.

It’s not meant to antagonize him, not really. Cor just wants to keep Loqi’s eyes off Noctis. He’d really like to get away with not killing any kids today.

Loqi jams the handle of the machine he’s holding onto the side of the downed mech and yanks… that is a _circular saw._ Who in Niflheim thought it was a bright idea to use a _circular saw_ in live combat?

Loqi revs the saw and smirks. “Looking a little panicked there, Marshal.”

He feels his face, if possible, go even flatter.

The Niflheim commander saunters forward as if he doesn’t have a care in the world, and something is _off_ about this. “Look at you. Kingdom fallen, people dead and scattered, _king_ dead. How many now have you sworn yourself to? How many have died on your watch?”

Indeed, though being called _the Immortal_ certainly strikes fear into the hearts of his enemies, the name originated from a much nastier rumor ‒ Cor’s habit of outliving those he had sworn to protect. Loqi, in his obsession with the Marshal, would of course know this. Cor doesn’t care. Whatever it takes to keep this last threat occupied until Noctis is back on his feet.

...Why _isn’t_ Noctis back on his feet? Cor knows Ignis has an elixir on him; the curative should have already taken effect.

Shifting his gaze to find out would be stupid, so he only draws his sword, a clear challenge that he _knows_ Loqi won’t back down from.

Somehow, Loqi’s smirk grows even _wider._ “And now, so will one more!”

And Cor was, for the second time today, very wrong.

The kid turns on a dime, faster than a jackrabbit, and then he’s already out of the range of his katana, circular saw screaming as it spins.

Cor shouts a warning. “ _Ignis!_ ”

Ignis whips around from where his king lies prone, throws a dagger with blinding speed.

It hits Loqi’s heart a split second after Prompto of all people sniped the commander between the eyes.

Prompto drops the gun with shaking hands. “Wow, um,” he stammers. “Talk about a v-villain mono ‒ molog… Ranting. Talking a lot. Yeah.”

Another _crash_ of groaning metal makes them all jump, but it’s just Gladio making his way out from under the wreckage. He stands up, breathing hard, and takes in the scene around him.

“What the fuck just happened?”

“Noct still isn’t responding,” says Ignis, face drawn.

“ _What?_ ”

Cor races to Ignis’ side, remembering the bright smear of blood from where Libertus scooped Noctis off the ground. Most of the bleeding seems to have stopped, but the half of his bones are still sticking out at odd angles. Libertus seemed to have done his best to keep the prince's neck straight, but something bulges out uncomfortably against one side where it rests.

Cor doesn’t hesitate. He pulls out a bright orange feather, the last one he has that was blessed by King Regis, and lays it against Noctis’s chest.

Prince Noctis’s eyes fly open as he catches fire from the top of his head to the ends of his toes. It’s over in a second, and he gulps down air, chest heaving.

He looks around with his eyes at the relative quiet. “Did we win?” he gasps.

“Of course we did you fuckin’ idiot,” Gladio growls. “Now what the _hell_ happened to your warp back there?”

“Not now, Gladio,” Ignis mutters, frowning. “Noct, can you stand?”

“Yeah, I’m fine ‒ _agh!_ ” The prince’s protests are cut off with a cry of pain as he attempts to sit upright.

“Gladio,” Ignis says sharply, “assist Noct to the car. Marshal, I’m afraid ‒”

“Go on, get out of here,” Cor interrupts. “Monica and I will stay and secure the road.”

Ignis nods and says nothing more. He turns on his heel to follow the Shield and his prince, and spots Prompto right where they left him, looking more than a little shell-shocked. Ignis frowns, unsure.

Cor waves him away. “I’ll talk to him. We’ll catch up.”

Ignis nods again, picks something off the ground ‒ the prince’s phone, with the battery knocked out ‒ and departs.

Cor sighs, pinches the bridge of his nose, then takes those last few steps toward the civilian who’d attached himself to a bunch of soldiers during an unexpected war.

‒‒

“You alright, kid?”

Prompto jumps practically a foot in the air at the sound. “Yeah!” he yelps. “Yeah, I’m fine. Totally fine.” His eyes keep skittering back to the body on the floor. Ignis has already retrieved his dagger, dismissed and returned to Noctis’s armiger without even pulling it out ‒ but the gristly head-shot remains.

And like. Hanging around with Noct and the guys and _Cor the Actual Immortal_ is awesome and everything. Prompto felt like he pulled his own weight down in the mines yesterday. And this morning Ignis got on his case a few times, but never outright told him to fuck off. Cor was actually giving Prompto tips at one point, which ‒ wow. Just wow.

They make it so easy for him to think that he’s one of them. Right up until the moment he remembers he’s not.

“Come over here with me,” says Cor.

He’s probably trying for non-threatening, but really, it just sets Prompto’s nerves even more on edge. “I said I’m _fine_.”

“Then you won’t mind giving me a rundown of what happened.”

And now Cor’s irritated with him. Crap.

“I ‒ I dunno! It was going fine until it wasn’t, and that anime asshole went for Noct, and it just kind of happened! And I’m _okay,_ I can handle it. Don’t ‒”

_Don’t send me away._

It’s an age-old fear that still comes to the forefront more often than he’d like. And he knows ‒ Noctis wouldn’t. Noct would never. But the people _around_ Noct? Prompto’s been waiting for the other shoe to drop since the day he worked up the courage to _talk_ to the prince. Lucis suddenly being at war seems like as good an excuse as any.

Cor only shakes his head, gaze turned skyward in silent entreaty. “Kid, relax. I’d just rather not have this conversation over the corpse of what is plainly your very first kill.”

Prompto’s stomach drops at _this conversation_ , but allows himself to be led a few feet away. Cor carefully guides him around the growing spread of blood ‒ rather more of it than Prompto expected ‒ and the bulky Nif weaponry the guy dropped. The one with the spinning blade. Prompto picks it up. He wonders if Commander Deadguy was planning to decapitate Noct or just eviscerate him.

Wow, bad thoughts. He dismisses the thing in a shower of blue crystalline magic, magic that Noctis lent to him. And it's good. It means Noctis is okay.

Noctis is okay because Prompto murdered someone.

“So,” says Cor, in a steady voice that brings Prompto back to Eos. “He’s dead.”

Prompto swallows around the lump in his throat. “Real dead.”

Cor nods at him. “And how do you feel about that?”

And boy, is that a loaded question. One he never expected from Cor the Freaking Immortal if Prompto is honest with himself, but he assumes there must be a reason.

The thing is, Prompto didn’t feel anything at the time. He didn’t even think, he just moved. It was only afterward that he was horrified, nauseated, and paradoxically _relieved._

It must be written all over his face, because Cor suddenly says, “You know you did the right thing, right?”

The right thing. Clearly. “Then why do I feel so sick?” he whispers.

Cor sighs sympathetically. “Because it wasn’t the _good_ thing.”

Prompto blinks up at him. “What?” he asks, stupidly. Of course saving Noctis was the _good_ thing. It’s unquestionable.

The Marshal sighs, deeply, like he’s spent a lot of hours and sleepless nights thinking about this. Or maybe he’s just real annoyed at Prompto being dense. It could be either or, really. “You ever notice how the _right_ thing and the _good_ thing seem like they go hand in hand, right up until you get to the really hard decisions?” he says.

“So ‒ you’re saying they’re not actually the same thing?”

“I’m saying I’m still working that out myself,” Cor says, nakedly honest. “And so has most of humanity since the dawn of godsdamned time. It’s not gonna get solved _today_ , but it’s also nothing new.”

And that… actually helps. It’s small, but if even Cor the Immortal has doubts, it makes Prompto’s worries seem so much smaller. The insistent, panicked certainty hanging heavy around his heart ~~_and etched in black onto his wrist_~~ that he’s started on a path to something monstrous... peels back.

Cor claps him on the shoulder, something knowing in his eyes, and they make their way back to the others. Ignis and Gladio are already waiting with Noctis in the Regalia, along with Libertus and Monica, both looking a little worse for wear. Ignis and Cor exchange a few words, then Gladio signals to pack it in. Prompto’s honestly happy to just sit in the car and _not think_ for a while. Though, knowing him, all he’ll end up doing is think to much.

He slides into the front seat just as Ignis revs the engine. Gladio’s still checking over Noctis in the back, doing that thing Prompto’s seen sometimes where he skims his hands everywhere, searching for further injury. He’s being particularly thorough on Noct’s head, which is probably the most important part. The fact that Noct’s putting up with it speaks to how much the prince must be aching right now.

They pull unhindered out of the base. Prompto notices Noct’s phone on the dashboard ‒ still in two pieces. Ignis must have left it there when he picked it up. Prompto still itches for something to _do,_ so he reattaches the battery. The thing lights up just fine, and Prompto smiles. Little things can still be both _right_ and _good,_ even if nobody’s sure about big things anymore.

Turning around, he taps Noctis on the knee to get his attention. Dude could probably use a distraction about now too. Noct doesn’t respond, and his eyes are closed in exhaustion. Prompto taps him again, more insistent. Anxiety creeps back up. Prompto remembers what Noctis looked like just a few minutes ago, only-mostly-dead on the pavement.

“Noct!” he shouts, shaking him. Ignis swerves a bit on the road when he looks to see what’s the matter.

Stormy blue eyes slide open with a wince. “What?” he snaps, annoyed. He seems fine.

Prompto blinks. “Uh… sorry. Weird moment there.”

Gladio rolls his eyes. “I think what blondie means is, _respond_ next time someone’s trying to get your attention. You already gave us one scare today.”

Noctis looks puzzled for a moment, then sees Prompto’s hand, still on his knee, and his face goes slack. “...Do that again,” he whispers, suddenly hoarse.

Prompto frowns, and taps Noctis on the knee. Then pinches hard, and then digs a fingernail into the exposed skin above his boot.

A look of terror dawns on Noct’s face. “Prompto,” he says, shaking. “I ‒ I can’t feel it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ryuu: I’m just saying - if I can land from 3 feet off the ground with enough force to break my arm, Noctis can land from 30 feet off the ground with enough force to break his neck. :)
> 
> Isis: Oh, yeah, 30 feet is just over the limit a person can easily survive on hard concrete. It’s a bit higher for water, but not much unless there’s something agitating the water to get rid of the tension.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is always sleep between part and meet.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots o’ worldbuilding in this one. Enjoy!
> 
> Disclaimer: Neither of us know jack about spinal injuries, but we’re pretty sure the FFXV devs didn’t either.

Lestallum isn’t  _ big _ , exactly. Just cramped, and with more alleyways and staircases than it seems like should fit in such a crowded place. The fountain plaza that hosts the Leville has no less than  _ four _ exits they can pick from, but the roads are so narrow that Riku immediately suggests they follow maze rules and make only left turns until otherwise indicated.

Two lefts later, and they’re in some kind of marketplace.

Which is handy, because although the food at Takka’s was extremely filling, it’s been like half a day since they’ve eaten much, and they’re hungry again.

“That’ll be 750g,” says the patron of a fruit stall.

Kairi reaches automatically to her belt pouch, but hesitates. “Wait, how does this even work?” she asks, turning to Riku.

“I’ll show you,” says Riku, holding out a hand. Kairi passes him the munny, and Riku counts out a few pieces. Extending them to the vendor, he asks, “Will this cover it?”

The vendor’s eyes go wide at the handful of actual solid  _ gold _ in Riku’s hand. “Yes sir it will!” he exclaims. “Thank you for your business and please come again!”

Riku thanks the man and takes their purchases in exchange, passing one of the oranges to Kairi. “Easy, right?” he says, smirking at her.

Kairi carefully peels and divides her snack, delicately eating one wedge at a time as they continue through the crowded streets. “I always thought munny was, like, an actual currency,” she muses.

“So did I, until I got to talking with one of the Moogles. Turns out it really is just a pun.”

“But don’t heartless drop this stuff? Like it just falls out of their dissolving bodies or whatever?”

“Uh-huh. Turns out some chemical reaction in the darkness just kind of synthesizes it.” The moogle, when Riku had had this conversation, told him of a particular heartless in a world of spiritual entities that had somehow gotten conscious control of the process. When it invaded a bathhouse looking for hearts to devour, it generated gold in its hands to lure victims close enough for it to consume.

They take another left, up a shallow set of stairs and away from the press of people. “I guess I always just assumed that munny was whatever money a person happened to have on them before turning into a heartless. And then when the heartless is destroyed all the person’s effects are just… on the ground. For whoever wants to pick it up.”

Riku gives her a flat look. “Kairi, that is tantamount to grave-robbing.”

“Well how was I supposed to know!”

‒

The next open space they see is actually what looks like part of the city’s perimeter. But instead of the rolling fields and swamps they had seen on the way here, it’s a cliff’s edge straight down, the edge of which curves into a steep crater. At the end of a bridge spanning to the center of a crater is an imposing building, plainly a factory of some sort from the way it belches smoke into the sky. The building itself sits directly on top of the crater’s most impressive feature: a large chunk of meteor, glittering purple and black, with white-hot flames skimming its surface.

Riku and Kairi spend a few moments just staring in awe at the fire before moving on.

The next left turn is a dead end, some kind of fenced-off storage area, so they make a right instead, and then another left. 

“Sooooo… what  _ was _ that earlier?” Kairi asks as they trip down an unusually wide set of stairs.

“What was what?”

“At the Leville.  _ ‘Are we sure that’s a good idea?’ _ ” she parrots in an exaggerated version of Riku’s voice. In her normal voice, she adds, “I think you kind of hurt Iris’s feelings.”

Riku sighs. “I know you’re not used to all this… world-travelling and stuff, but you do have to keep a certain distance. People here can’t know where we’re actually from.”

“Riku, literally everyone we know knows we’re from off-world.”

“You’re only counting the people who got caught up in this whole Xehanort mess,” Riku counters. “On a broader scale, it’s just more ethical to let individual worlds develop on their own, free of outside influence.”

“I mean, Radiant Garden is practically a hub of intergalactic travel at this point, but I guess you’re not wrong.” Kairi makes a mischievous face at him. “So we’re ‒ what, a pair of anonymous travelling adventurers? Looking to stir up trouble wherever we wander?”

“Ideally not,” Riku chuckles. “Keybearers are  _ supposed _ to keep the peace.”

“Yeah, that’s what Merlin said,” Kairi comments, examining an array of blue valve pipes. They seem to all be attached to that factory at the back. “Kinda got the feeling he was bullshitting though.”

Riku gives her a sidelong glance. “What  _ did _ he teach the two of you?”

“Magic, mostly. Any swordfighting he knew was pretty much exclusively second-hand. He’s not a keyblade wielder at all, so most of what we learned on that front was either self-taught or based on what Axel could remember from watching Roxas.”

“Sora and I are both self-taught too.”

“Exactly. So I think I’ll probably do fine.”

“Damn right you will,” Riku says softly. Indeed, what he saw of Kairi’s performance at the fall of Insomnia was exemplary, and he spends an indulgent moment just feeling ridiculously proud of her. Then, “Axel? Not Lea?”

She makes a face. “He said not to worry about it if I don’t  _ have it memorized. _ Guess neglecting to be offended when I get it wrong is the least he can do for me.” She laughs, just a bit.

It doesn’t seem forced, but Riku frowns anyway. “You... okay?”

“Yeah, I’m over it. Honestly what’s more annoying is the fact that he’s  _ not. _ ”

Riku kinda knows where Axel is coming from in that regard, but doesn’t say so. Kairi doesn’t need  _ two _ walking guilt-trips in her life.

_ Aaaand with that, we have entered depression territory, _ Riku thinks, annoyed with himself.  _ Time to turn this particular train of thought around. _

“Hey,” he says, completely changing the subject. “Wanna give that call to Ienzo a try? We’re pretty secluded back here.”

It’s true, at least. They’ve been wandering what seems to be the city’s perimeter for the past twenty minutes or so ‒ the kind of place where thieves lurked, if Riku was feeling imaginative. “Sure,” says Kairi, and she produces her gummiphone again.

She keys in Ienzo’s IP (inter-planetary) address and hits dial. It seems to take an age for the call to go through though, and she frowns and holds her phone higher in the air as though that will help the signal somehow.

_ “Hello?” _ Ienzo’s face fills the small screen.  _ “Kairi, Riku ‒ I hadn’t expected to hear from you two so soon.” _

The two exchange a glance. “How long has it been?” Riku asks cautiously.

_ “Well I thought you just left a few minutes ago. Is something the matter?” _

Kairi gapes. “Uh… we’ve been on this world for about two days.”

Riku can’t tell if Ienzo’s eyebrows lift into his hair, as the guy has a  _ lot _ of hair, but he can imagine. 

_ “How extraordinary! Time discrepancies between worlds are common, but I’ve never heard of one at that extreme. Days going by in a matter of minutes… And if you take Radiant Garden as the standard, then ‒” _

“Uh, hey, Ienzo?” Riku interjects. “We actually did call with a question for you.”

“We wanted to know about your gummiphones,” says Kairi, “and if they can be synched up to similar devices.”

_ “Probably. Similar how?” _

Riku examines his own gummiphone, trying to compare it to the phone Iris had. “They seem the same on the outside, just communication devices. But I think they send calls to specific phones, rather than just shooting a signal at a world for anyone on your network to pick up.”

_ “Well with so few of us to keep track of ‒ relatively speaking ‒ and considering the distances involved, it only seemed prudent. But I’ll see what I can do. Will you be coming back to Radiant Garden for them, or should I just install an app update?” _

Kairi winces and looks guilty. “Yeah… about that?”

“Our ship is parked somewhere we can’t access right now,” says Riku.

“In the middle of a demolished city,” Kairi adds.

“Surrounded by  _ really _ hostile soldiers,” Riku finishes.

Ienzo facepalms.  _ “Let you two go off on your own for five minutes… “ _

“Two days.”

_ “I suppose I’ll have to inform King Mickey about this.” _

He almost grabs the screen out of Kairi’s hand. Almost. “Has he found any sign of Aqua at all?” he presses.

_ “As I said ‒ five minutes.” _

Riku blinks, remembers himself. “Right…”

Kairi gives him a sympathetic glance. “On the plus side, it means we have time to do everything we need to here without worrying about making her wait.”

“I suppose there is that,” Riku mutters, and it really does make him feel a lot better about this whole extended side-trip.

The frame of the screen around Ienzo’s face judders and moves as he places his own gummiphone down and moves around his workspace.  _ “If making the trip back isn’t an option, you two might as well stay on the line while I work this out. Otherwise you might be waiting for weeks for the new program.” _

Riku does the math in his head. “Don’t you mean months?”

_ “I know what I’m about, Riku.” _

He stares at Kairi, confounded. “Did… Did Ienzo just make a joke?”

“I think he did!”

_ “I know rude gestures too. Want to see?” _ They can’t see Ienzo at all from this angle, and his voice is a little muffled besides. It’s still pretty funny.

“...Wait,” Kairi asks after a moment. “How does  _ this _ work? With the time differences, I mean. We’ve already been on the line for a while, how is it the same while for you?”

_ “Oh that’s an easy one. If you imagine the progression of time as a flat sheet of rubber, then pinch the rubber at one ‒” _

“Never mind!” Riku and Kairi chorus in synch.

Ienzo huffs, put out, but complies. 

As they wait, another small tendril of guilt crawls into Riku’s stomach. Time is of the essence, as Ienzo himself pointed out, but Riku still feels a little bad for brushing him off. Ienzo really is trying hard to be helpful, and probably hasn’t felt curious or enthusiastic about  _ anything _ since he was eight years old.

‒‒‒

When Noctis was eight years old, a daemon attacked.

No one knew how it got inside the Wall. He’s pretty sure they still don’t. One minute the road was empty. The next, six swords were impaled into two cars.

They called it the Marilith, a gargantuan six-armed daemon with the lower body of a snake. At the moment of the attack, Noctis’s nurse did what she was trained to do: she picked him up and ran.

The fact that she was holding him was probably the only thing that let him survive, when the Marilith caught them. A swing of a sword, an instant of pain ‒ and then a whole lot of nothing.

There is only so much a human mind can handle without completely shutting down. Noctis was distantly aware that his nurse’s body was heavy on top of him, a split-second after he realized that she was, in fact, a newly dead body. The registration of this was far away, however. He was much more concerned with the warm blood soaking his clothes. Her blood? His? He couldn’t tell. He only watched the puddle around them both expand, stared dumbly as it dripped from his hands and down his hair.

Blood is the most prevalent memory, the strange texture of it when it was outside his skin instead of inside. Most else falls, blessedly, into a haze.

He remembers the Marilith, the monster, rising to its full height and staring down at Noctis as though he were the most insignificant speck in the universe.

He remembers Crownsguard, dozens of them, being knocked back in droves as they tried to surround the beast.

He remembers his father’s silhouette, furious against the flames.

He remembers nothing else for a very, very long time.

‒

Noctis awoke months later, at the behest of a furry creature in his dreams calling itself Carbuncle. He was terrified, confused, and in more pain than he could have ever imagined. But his father was  _ right there _ , holding his hand and promising he would be safe. And Carbuncle had said that everything would be okay. So Noctis held onto that, and didn’t think about anything else.

The next day was the first time he met Luna.

You’d think a twelve-year-old and an eight-year-old wouldn’t get along very well. But Luna was just so full of light, kindness, and generosity. Where Noctis was shy, she was warm and inviting. And where he was fearful, Luna was bold and strong. She pushed him in his wheelchair down the long, opulent hallways of Fenestala Manor at speeds to make them both shriek with excitement. She introduced him to an anak fawn that had been abandoned by its family down in the lower valley. She took him to a room with a grand piano and watched him play. And on days when Noctis was in too much pain to even be carried downstairs, much less wheeled around, Luna brought armloads of sylleblossoms to his hospital room and showed him how to weave them together into crowns, or read to him, or sang him every song she knew. Sometimes Ravus was there, or Noctis’s father. Sometimes Gentiana watched over the pair of them with unseeing eyes.

He met with Luna’s mother, Queen Sylva of Tenebrae and Oracle of Eos, every day for healing. Gradually, the intermittent numbness and flashing pain subsided, though he never quite regained all feeling in his toes. Slowly, the spasms and muscular seizures that kept him bedbound for days at a time abated, though they still recur from time to time to this day. And one day, when Noctis was well enough to start taking hesitant, stumbling steps from his wheelchair to the bed, Luna sat down with him and handed him a book called  _ The Cosmogeny. _

She explained, at length, about the Crystal his father kept safe, how its purpose ‒ it’s  _ calling _ ‒ was to find the one person in all the world who can fix everything that is wrong, and that that person… was Noctis.

“You… really think I can do that?” It made no sense to Noctis that a boy as dull and ordinary as him would grow up to be a savior. 

“As Oracle, I will see to it,” Luna said firmly.

For a moment, Noctis thought he misheard.

Luna only smiled at him. “To aid the King is the Oracle’s calling.”

And that… made everything else make more sense. Luna was so smart and kind and good, the most special person he knew. If she thought he was special too, then Noctis could only suppose he must be. Maybe it would be difficult. Maybe Noctis would never fully recover from the Marilith attack. But if Luna believed in him, he would try. Noctis would try anything.

“Then… I guess I can do it,” he said, feeling a smile come to his lips. “I won’t let you down!”

She smiled back, twice as bright. “I know you won’t.”

_ (The first time Noctis saw Luna, he was curled painfully small in a wheelchair pushed by his despondent father, and she was smiling by a warm window with sunshine pouring in. She introduced herself by name, and though Noctis was yet too small to pronounce it correctly, took to his nickname for her with grace. _

_ The last time he saw her, he was struggling from his father’s grip, reaching for Luna as she stayed behind, mechanical soldiers surrounding her as her home burned. Noctis screamed her name until his voice gave out, long after he couldn’t see her anymore.) _

‒‒

Noctis  _ aches. _

The pain is dull with age, but constant, creeping up his neck and down the back of his arm. The shattered bones mended without a problem, but his spinal column had already been severed in half once, along with most of his waist. Though he was revived and nominally cured via phoenix down, the disruption to his spine caused by broken neck seems to have aggravated a much older injury.

The fall coinciding with an as-yet-unexplained migraine to end all migraines probably didn’t do his nervous system any favors either.

They backtrack to Prairie Outpost. It rankles, after all they did to open the road west, but they have more allies and ready supplies here, and it gives Ignis a chance to properly assess the damage. Not that Noctis really needs him to, but Ignis always feels better when he thinks he’s doing something constructive.

“Do you feel this, Noct?”

He considers. “I feel... pressure, but no actual contact?”

Ignis hums, and rests a hand against his shin. “Try to push against me.”

Noctis tries his damnedest to lift his foot upward, but only manages a few inches.

“Well, it’s ‒ it’s not as bad as when you were younger.”

When he was younger he was nearly cleaved in half at the waist and barely survived several rounds of emergency surgery in Tenebrae thanks to the direct intervention of the Oracle. This time he fell on his head and was was brought back with a curative. Of course it’s not as bad. 

He’s about to say so when he feels a faint tremor, and another blinding headache knocks him flat. When he can see again without wanting to throw up, Ignis is wearing his patented ‘extremely concerned but doesn’t want you to know about it’ face, and the digital clock on the bedside table has fallen to the floor.

“Noct, are you ‒”

“I’m  _ fine, _ Ignis. I just… want to take a nap.”

For once, Ignis doesn’t argue.

‒

He’s woken a few hours later by more pain in his head, right on the tail end of a dream. In the dream he was somewhere rocky and unbearably hot, the very stone set aflame in some places, with rock formations in every direction. Skating the perimeter is a figure that seems just barely familiar, like seeing something out of a long-ago dream. And there in the center, glowing like a star, is ‒ 

“...Luna,” he mutters, half-awake and aching.

“Come again?” 

On the chair nearby the bed is Gladio, a book in his lap.

“Did you seriously watch me sleep?” Noctis asks.

“What, you like it when Iggy does it, but not me?”

Noctis doesn’t have an answer to that, so he settles for flipping a clumsy bird at his Shield, and rolls back over in bed.

“Hey,” says Gladio, “before you check out again, I wanna ask you something.”

“Yeah, what?” he asks, not moving.

Gladio doesn’t say anything for a while, so Noctis rolls back to the other side to face him, and sees that he’s leaning forward, elbows on knees, and frowning. “What do you think Lady Lunafreya is doing right now?”

Noctis blinks. Whatever question he was expecting, that wasn’t it. “Assuming she’s not dead like all the reports are saying… I really don’t know.”

“Just… I had a question for the Marshal, and he gave me this by way of response.” Gladio closes his book and holds it up; Noctis sees it’s a copy of the  _ Cosmogony, _ of all things. “And I got to reading it while you were napping and, well. There’s a passage about exactly this.”

Noctis frowns. “Exactly what?”

Gladio opens the book again, at a page he’s marked with his finger. “‘From the deep, the Archean calls,’” he reads. “‘But on deaf ears, the gods’ tongue falls. The king made to kneel, in pain, he crawls.’”

“The Archean?”

“Every time the ground shakes, your brain aches,” Gladio states, matter-of-factly. “And I ain’t the only one to notice. Sir Ostium was the first to figure it out.”

Noctis thinks back. He couldn’t have noticed a quake when he fell from the sky, but there were noticeable aftershocks during the drive back, each one accompanied by a spike of pain. Not all of them were completely debilitating ‒ in fact, most of them could be classified as mere annoyances. It strikes him that it was just plain bad luck that the first one caught him so badly by surprise.

“...Okay,” Noctis allows. “So if I understand you right, you’re saying that these headaches have something to do with that Prophesy thing everyone kept saying I’m part of. That they’re a sign of a, uh… a what-do-you-call-it ‒”

“A Covenant. Which can only mean ‒”

“Luna  _ is _ alive,” Noctis concludes, breathless.

Gladio nods carefully, and adds, “We won’t know for sure until we see Titan for ourselves.”

Noctis grunts as he pulls himself upright and places his feet on the floor. He can  _ just about _ balance on his feet, if he’s leaning heavily on something and locks his knees, but he’s still unsteady. Gladio balances him with an arm and assists his hobbling walk to the door.

“There’ll be a test,” Noct grinds out as he focuses on keeping his footing. “I don’t know what kind, but if I’m ‒”

“We’ll figure it out,” Gladio assures him. “Who knows, maybe the big guy’ll patch you up if you pass. A little divine aid, or something.”

Noctis wouldn’t go that far, as the gods did jack-all to help him the first time this happened. It was only thanks to Oracle Sylva that he walked again at all.

_ The Oracle. _ “No,” Noctis says suddenly, and nearly stumbles before Gladio catches him again. “We go to Luna first.”

“Noct, we know exactly where Titan is. Lady Lunafreya is a needle in a haystack, and this whole prophecy theory is all conjecture anyway.”

“If she’s alive, she’ll help me,” Noctis insists. “And I need to help her. Gladio, I  _ know _ her ‒ she’s probably out there trying to do this completely on her own!”

“Alright, stop freaking out,” Gladio growls. Noct doesn’t think he was freaking out, but he shuts up anyway. “Let’s run this by Ignis, see what he thinks. And we’d have to let Cor know.”

“Is he even back yet?”

“Yeah, about an hour ago. ‘S when he gave me the book.”

Noctis nods, and then another question occurs to him:

“What the hell did you even ask Cor in the first place, if a copy of the Cosmogony is his answer?”

“Oh, nothing serious. I just had a couple questions about nunya.”

When Noctis thinks about his reaction later, and how he fell right into the stupidest of all traps, he will console himself with the knowledge that he was still drowsy, still focused almost entirely on the prospect of seeing Luna again, and had quite a trying few days on top of it all. “The hell is  _ nunya? _ ” he asks.

“ _ None-ya business! _ ”

‒‒

“Ulric and Altius have already been briefed. Before they went dark, Altius was in the middle of securing transportation across the sea, so you should have ample time to catch up to them.”

“Understood.”

Cor said his goodbyes to Nyx Ulric and Crowe Altius a few days earlier, as soon as word reached them that Niflheim was in possession of both the Crystal and the Ring of the Lucii. Both were formal and regimented, as the times call for, but a second, private goodbye was reserved for Nyx. They commiserated over the betrayal of one so well thought of, and shared a few casual touches that they rarely allow themselves these days. Little was said outright, but it didn’t need to be. They knew each other too well for that.

Sir Libertus Ostium is done packing for his leg of the journey, and is already set up with a rusted but presumably reliable automobile. Cor was politely asked, when they received the car from a pair of Hunters, not to inquire too thoroughly about its origins. This suited both him and Ostium just fine. The rest of this is just formalities. Cor probably doesn’t  _ need _ to brief Ostium one last time, but he and the other two Glaives will be completely dark after this. No contact from them, to anyone at all, once they leave Lucis’s borders. 

“Is there anything else you need?” Cor asks anyway.

Ostium shrugs. “Can’t think of anything. Least not anything that can be gotten nowadays.”

Cor nods at the car behind him with a bit of a smirk. “You’d be surprised.” He’s made a lot of headway with the Hunters in the past few days. Cid was right about them, and Dave was as good as his word. There’s a lot more manpower to go around than he first thought.

Libertus waves it off. “Nah, we’ll manage. Always have.”

“You can’t rely on your old tactics,” Cor cautions. 

“You kiddin’ me? Unlike Crowe and the Hero, I never had nothin’ to rely on. But you know they’re both smart. And I may be dumb as a rock, but I can keep them on their toes. We’ll be fine.”

Cor thinks of Nyx setting records, warping for miles at a shot without stopping, and imagines him having to walk the distance, furiously impatient. It’s equally strange to think of someone like Crowe, who made a name for herself by throwing around tornados and firestorms and lightning like a literal force of nature, reduced to plain physical combat.

“You’d better be more than fine,” Cor says. “Success on this mission is not optional.”

“I know, sir.”

An awkward throat-clearing has them both turning to the Prince--no, King--functionally held up with an arm around his back from Gladio. Neither of them look happy about the situation, Noctis’ lips turned into a petulant frown that almost has Cor open his mouth. He doesn’t, because he’d be feeling the exact same thing if their positions were switched, but it’s close. They are flanked by Ignis and Prompto, looking nervous but ready.

“We’re about to head out,” Gladio says, the tiniest of sighs escaping him. Knowing him, Gladio wants Noctis to  _ stay put _ until he can do more than barely stand on his feet. With everything the way it is, they don’t have that luxury.

His  _ King _ needing time to heal is a luxury now. Fuck.

“Makes two of us,” Libertus quips with a lazy salute.

“Oh yeah?” says Prompto. He still sounds a little uncertain, but standing straighter than he was this afternoon. “Where ya headed?”

“It’s best that none of you know for now,” Cor interjects. “Safer for everyone that way.”

Ignis nods his assent, then asks, “You’ll keep an eye out?”

They had discussed Gladio’s conclusion that the gods were calling to Noctis. “Of course,” Cor nods. “Any sightings of the Oracle, and you’ll be the first to know.”

There’s silence between them all for a moment, tense but natural. It’s time for them to move on, move forward. The kingdom won’t reclaim itself.

Libertus breaks it first, ducking his head and making for his car. “I’d better head out, then.”

“C'mere first,” says Noctis

Libertus does so. His eyebrows shoot up when the prince raises a shaking hand to the Glaive's forehead, but he kneels, recognizing the gesture.

Ignis sees it too, and starts. “Highness -”

“Shut up, I can still do this.” Noctis frowns and traces a small rune into Libertus's brow with his thumb ‒ the Sword of Bahamut, the Astral with dominion over war and magic alike. Thus, the person given this gift becomes a sword in the king’s hand, with access to the king’s magic. Thus, Libertus Ostium is a Glaive again.

Objectively speaking, the additional drain to his lifeforce isn’t much. King Regis supported hundreds of Kingsglaive and the Wall besides. But just now, Noctis doesn’t have a lot of energy to give, and his knees buckle. He doesn’t fall far ‒ his Shield sees to that ‒ but it must rankle.

Libertus rises, but keeps his head bowed. “You didn’t need to do that, your Majesty.”

“What?” says Noctis. “Top-secret mission with the world’s highest stakes, and you say you  _ couldn’t _ use an extra advantage? Of course I had to.” 

And it might be Cor’s imagination, but there seems to be a ghost of that habitual self-assured smirk gracing the prince’s face. It’s a warming sight, much more familiar than the the purposeless ghost that had drifted through Leide these past two days. 

Noctis stands as best as he’s able, and Cor nods. “I’ll be in touch,” says the Marshal.

The groups part ways.

(They won’t see each other again for a long time.)

‒‒‒

Sora ends up having to carry Lunafreya after all.

She protests pretty strongly about it. Something about  _ royal dignity _ or something equally silly. But the earthquakes don’t stop, and the landscape of the Disc keeps fluctuating right under their feet. They need to get out, and they can’t go back the way they came.

So Sora just goes up and over, with the Oracle clinging grudgingly to his back.

There’s a  _ lot _ of wall-running involved, as it turns out. As he had distantly noticed on their way in, the Disc of Cauthess doesn’t end at the crater; cliffs and high steppes rise around the perimeter for miles, like waves made of stone instead of water. Sora’s always had excellent stamina ‒ even if he couldn’t out-fight Riku as a kid, he could always out- _ last _ him ‒ but this tests even his limits. 

Past a rusted segment of fence, past some odd pipes and other infrastructure set into the ground, past a truly  _ enormous _ four-footed animal with great curling antlers ‒ the pair of them finally reach a road. 

Lunafreya lowers her feet and stands on her own power, though she’s hunched and breathing heavily still. 

“Soon it will be too dark to remain outside. We will need to find a place to stop for the night,” she says.

Sora glances around. “I think I can see lights in that direction.” He points roughly westward, where he can make out some towers and smokestacks over the hills.

“That’s Lestallum, I believe,” Lunafreya says, squinting against the sunset. “From what I can recall, it seems nearer to here than it actually is. It rests on a cliff above Taelpar Crag, but the nearest bridge across the gorge is a good deal further north. We’d never make the trip on foot before dark.” She frowns and scans the rest of the horizon ‒ seems to spot something. “This way,” she says, crossing the road and into the rocky hills beyond.

Sora stretches upward to get the kinks out of his back and follows at her heels. “You keep saying that,” he wonders aloud. “What happens after dark?”

Lunafreya actually pauses for a moment, looks at him with an odd expression. “Daemons happen. Monsters of the darkness, and a plague upon our world.”

He tilts his head as they resume walking. “Darkness?” he asks. “Like… the heartless?”

She shakes her head. “I’ve not heard the term, but I would not be surprised if daemons or creatures like them were not unique to Eos. But they abhor the light of the sun, and are forced underground until nightfall. Then they venture out to hunt.”

She doesn’t need to specify  _ what _ they hunt. Sora is well familiar.

“Hmm… Well, the heartless aren’t bothered by daylight,” he says, frowning slightly. “It’s the light of our hearts they can’t stand. So they seek out the strongest lights and try to extinguish them.”

He doesn’t need to specify what he means by  _ lights _ either.

“Darkness yet remains in all worlds,” Lunafreya says at length. “It takes on so many shapes and colors and forms that at times it seems impossible to ‒”

She is cut off by another earthshake that causes them both to stumble. When it passes, Lunafreya looks back to the burning shape of the meteor at the center of the Disc, already far behind them now. 

“Darkness is always defeated, in the end,” she says, voice suddenly firmer. “Even when our hearts give in, it’s only temporary. Deep down, there’s a light that never goes out. No darkness can last forever.”

Sora chokes on a soft laugh, and Lunafreya looks at him questioningly.

“Nothing,” he says, still smiling. “Just ‒ that’s what  _ I’m _ always saying.”

Lunafreya smiles, all the way to the crinkling of her eyes.

‒

It isn’t long before Sora can see, or at least guess, where Lunafreya is leading them to. Up the side of a nearby hill, glittering faintly in the dusk, is a plume of what looks like smoke ‒ if smoke were made of light.

“This is a haven for travellers against the daemons,” Lunafreya explains when they arrive, tracing over the runes along the rocky plinth with long fingers. The markings glow brighter in the wake of her touch. “Places like this were created all over Eos by Oracles past. Travel between cities is already difficult; without havens it would be impossible.”

“Cool,” Sora remarks, walking around the area. The stone is more-or-less flat and even, and sticks up out of the side of the hill at an incline, almost like it was once all even ground and then the earth eroded around it. A small wooden sign around the back says  _ Lingagh Haven. _ “So daemons can’t get to you as long as you’re inside the circle, right? That’s handy!” It also tickles something in his memory, like a dream he only half-remembers. 

Lunafreya climbs up the side of the stone. Sora notes with a frown that she’s still looking wan. “Not the most comfortable of places to spend the night, I’m afraid,” she says, gingerly lowering herself to a sitting position inside the circle. Then she smiles wryly. “Not that that’s ever stopped you.”

He grins at her. “It’s a skill. Nothin’ beats warm sand for a nap, though.”

“Or a sleeping bag, at the least,” she mutters as she begins to dig through her travel bag. “I can probably use the bag as a pillow, but I’m afraid all it contains is food supplies. I was in a bit of a hurry when packing, unfortunately.”

Sora’s stomach abruptly reminds him  _ very _ strongly that he hasn’t eaten much of anything since… wow, since early this morning, aboard Commodore Highwind’s airship. Time flies when you’re running for your life.

In Luna’s bag are some wrapped sandwiches, a stack of granola bars, a couple of rather bruised apples, and some jerky. There’s also a canteen and a few other odds and ends tucked into the corners, though they couldn’t have weighed much. She passes Sora a sandwich when he points at one, and selects a granola bar (chocolate pecan) and an apple for herself. 

“Lestallum will be a good place to resupply,” Lunafreya muses to herself, though distractedly. Now that she’s seated it’s like she can barely focus, she’s so tired. “Perhaps pick up some kind of shelter for future haven stays… though how could I even carry it on foot, it’s too ‒ oh,  _ drat _ this wrapping!” The granola bar’s plastic packaging slips from her tired fingers, torn at an odd angle.

Sora swallows what he’s eaten of his sandwich and stuffs the rest in a pouch at his hip ‒ there’s space there now that it’s down a few curatives. “You seriously need some sleep,” he says, trying for a light tone. “I mean  _ really _ seriously. You look like you’re in pain or something.”

The Oracle sags. “Hard stone does me no favors, I’m sure.”

“Ooh! I can fix that! Be right back!” He glances around rapidly, then grins when he finds what he’s looking for and heads in that direction.

“Sora, it’s nearly dark,” Lunafreya cautions.

He skips backwards, grinning at her. “C’mon, I fought a  _ god _ today. A couple of daemons should be no problem, assuming they even show.” 

‒

They don’t show, which is just as well. Neither do any heartless, which is honestly more of a surprise. But there’s still a faint twilight glow on the western horizon when Sora returns to the haven with several armloads of leaves and long grass. Lunafreya has already started a fire at its center.

“Here,” he says, arranging the detritus in an organized heap. “I always say ‒ If you can’t go to the soft stuff, you bring the soft stuff to you!” He smiles. “Or something like that. Try it out.”

Lunafreya levers herself upward with a slight wince, eying the pile curiously. “Do I just… sit in it?”

The uncertainty in her voice is so at odds with everything Sora’s observed about the Oracle that he has to laugh. “Nah. Or ‒ kinda. You sit at the edge and kind of lean on it. Slowly, so it doesn’t fly everywhere.”

She gives him a wry look as she complies, probably guessing ‒ correctly ‒ that Sora has absolutely flopped chaotically into leaf piles before. 

“And!” Sora adds, reaching for Lunafreya’s travel bag. “You can prop your legs up with this, cuz you’ll toss and turn less if your knees are up.”

Lunafreya’s expression grows significantly less pained by the time he’s done, approaching something closer to surprise. “It’s… like a recliner.”

“Yep! A couple years going wherever the wind takes you, and you learn a few things,” Sora says brightly.

“Where will you sleep?” Her eyes are already half-lidded. Sora grins.

“That’s the  _ best _ part about piles ‒ they can be shared!” And with that he plops himself, gently, on the other side behind Lunafreya. Sora uses it more as a pillow, as it’s not really big enough for them both to lay on it fully, but he doesn’t mind. 

“Oh, cool,” Sora breathes, when he’s settled.. “The stars are out.”

“Which one’s yours?”

The question takes Sora a little off-guard. “Umm,” he begins. “Hard to say. Some worlds seem to keep fixed positions… Like that one there, second star to the right.” He points. “But mostly they tend to wander. Can’t keep the same route between them for more than a few months before the lane closes again.”

“They all seem so… far away.”

Riku’s voice drifts up from his memory, and Sora smiles, just a little. “Nah. They’re always closer than you think.”

Lunafreya doesn’t say anything for so long that Sora begins to think she’s already fallen asleep. Frankly he wouldn’t be surprised. But when he turns to check, he sees her eyes still open, and follows her gaze to see what she’s staring at.

Aways up the slope is a hulking figure in red armor, illuminated by the glow of its massive fiery cutlass. It paces slowly toward the road, and though it gives their camp a wide berth as it passes, Sora can still feel vibrations in the ground with every step it takes.

“Is that…”

“A daemon, yes,” Lunafreya finishes. “Though that specific kind is supposedly rare in this part of the world.”

Sora feels like he should probably definitely do something ‒ kill it, lead it somewhere else ‒ but the Oracle’s clinical assessment leaves him oddly paralyzed. “Shouldn’t we… Is it going to hurt somebody?”

“If we leave this circle,” Lunafreya replies calmly, “more daemons will appear. More than both of us together could handle, given our current state. It’s unlikely that that one will come across anyone who isn’t similarly protected. Remember, daemons only appear in the dark of night. Everyone in this world knows to take shelter.”

Sora huffs quietly and settles down again. It goes against his every instinct, but she’s probably right. Whatever passed them has a… a  _ physicality _ to its presence that Sora is completely unused to. Daemons  _ are _ different from heartless, though he can’t yet pin down exactly why, other than a vague feeling that heartless are somehow more abstract. 

At the thought, the abstract carvings from the tomb he found flash into Sora’s mind ‒ meaningful images stripped of their context, decorating a place the keyblade found significant enough to insist on an intervention of some kind. 

Generally that only happened at a world’s keyhole, didn’t it? 

Sora rolls onto his side as the events of the past few days catch up with him. When he first came to this world, there was something strange about it, but he hadn’t bothered to consider it. Then he spent several days smuggled aboard an airship with Lunafreya. And then when they touched down again, the first place he’s led to is the resting place of a  _ deity _ , which happens to be on top of the resting place of… someone else.

Which ‒ sure, Princess on a mission, there’s going to be some capital-r Relevant stuff happening. But the keyblade had no interest in Titan, only what lay below.

“Hey, Lunafreya?” he starts to ask.

But the Oracle is asleep.

Sora sighs and rolls onto his back. But it’s a long time before he’s able to follow suit.

‒‒

In his dreams, Noctis’s reflection is a child, or maybe a teenager Iris’s age, with dark, suntanned skin and gilded brown hair. He’s dressed mostly in black with bright contrasting splotches of color, and his eyes are the perfect blue of a cloudless noonday sky. He seems not to notice Noctis’s presence, standing idly on his side of the mirror, looking around into distant nothingness.

Noctis is sure,  _ so _ sure, that he’s seen this boy before. In another life, or perhaps just another dream.

“Do I know you?” he asks, for the second time.

He doesn’t know if the boy hears, but he nevertheless gets the sense of an answer ‒ curiosity, and welcoming the intrusion without a trace of hesitation. They are lit from beneath now, in many colors of rippling light, lined in shapes that don’t quite coalesce.

_ You’re hurt, _ the boy observes. 

Noctis shrugs. It feels forced, in this place, like a mask instead of a gesture. He thinks that maybe gestures are redundant here. 

“So are you,” he counters, and if gestures are superfluous, then words are doubly so. The sound is swallowed up by the encompassing fog, but the idea travels easily through the void between them.

The light dims, just slightly, and the boy, still standing there and not acknowledging anything, hunches his shoulders with an expression of melancholy. 

_ I’m working through it, _ the boy says. At the same time, a hot, bright feeling erupts in Noct’s chest, and he feels like they are the same.

“Yeah, me too,” Noctis replies, hand over his heart. “I know someone… who might be able to help me.”

What follows is a loneliness so profound that Noctis has not felt its like since he was a child, and something  _ shifts. _

_ I do too… but they’re not with me right now. _

Instead of stained-glass and darkness, Noctis is assaulted by the memory of another dream, very recent. Sand and sky, viewed through a haze of water, and three voices asking him three questions:  _ What do you fear? What do you love? What do you wish? _

“Do you wish they were?”

_ All the time. _

There’s still sky, but only behind his reflection. Around Noctis it is dark, lit by distant galaxies and a bright waxing moon. His heart is no tropical island, but a sprawling metropolis ‒  _ home _ is where the heart is, and Insomnia will always be home.

Has he been here before? To this bright, other side? He must have, to remember the sky so vividly. 

“You could go to them,” Noctis suggests. It seems… viscerally wrong, for a child like this to be sad.

The boy stretches on the dirt-and-grass path, and ambles toward the shore.  _ “Something else I’ve gotta do first,” _ he says, actually speaking for the first time, though not in any particular direction.  _ “A friend asked me to find someone.” _

Noctis finds himself leaning forward, pressing against whatever barrier that separates their worlds, with an urgency he barely registers and doesn’t at all understand. 

“Find who?”

The boy steps, barefoot, into the breaking waves. On Noctis’s side, the horizon moves, just a little. Faint brushes of color stroke the city skyline, showing the first hint of daybreak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Our take on the concept of munny is entirely Isis’s idea. The intricacies of gummiphones and time discrepancies belong to Ryuu.
> 
> Isis: On Munny: Hey look this is where I smush gameplay and story segregation together with a crowbar and industrial glue! But really, either you make money universal everywhere somehow, or you make ‘Munny’ look really damn weird and the main characters get weird looks and then they’re shit out of luck and doing hunts for cash and I don’t think they’d let sixteen year olds out hunting willy nilly and then they’re showing off their magic and they’re NOT royals and it’d be a total fuckup. / end ramble   
> But yeah I can totally see Riku/Sora/Kairi picking up shiny bits of gold afterwards along with the synth items. Hm. Synth items, gonna have to think about that too… And Sora just picks up shiny shit because he can. This kid’s hands do NOT stay still. Ah, my hobo child…  
> (In other news, Riku and Kairi are going to become Very Popular in Lestallum.)
> 
> AND: Spot the Miyazaki reference! (We are such total nerds. Expect stealth references everywhere.)  
> None of these kids know how to socialize. Get yanked away from your normal life on the cusp of high school to save the universe and your social skills get a biiiiiiit rusty. Kairi has a bit of an idea, having gone through at LEAST one year of high school, but only one. Bwhahahaha.
> 
> Stealth Cor/Nyx fluff! I am a suuuuuucker for this pairing, and convinced Ryuu to put it in. You’ll hate me for this later. -innocent author look-
> 
> Sora is surprisingly good at camping. When you’ve traveled to a literal shitload of different environs, you gotta learn or be forever uncomfortable. Goofy probably taught him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The bright, blessed day...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, 10 chapters. This has to be a milestone or something. A huge thank you to all of our readers for supporting, commenting, and generally enjoying this story. Nearly 300 kudos and 150 comments… Holy moly, please let us hug and thank ALL OF YOU. We. Just. LOVE. Hearing from each and every one of you. We do this for y’all. <3 -Ryuu
> 
>    
> Actually we’ve hit over 300 kudos as of posting. Thank you all so much. When this was suggested it was a half-joke, half-seriousness, and I never thought it would take off like this. We write for ourselves, to fix the giant fucking bullshit that is the end of these games, but it wouldn’t be the way it is without all of you.  
>  _And we’ve only just gotten started._ -Isis

Sora awakes the next morning to filtered sunlight flickering through a stand of trees, and a persistent memory of stars. He’s also lying much flatter than when he started ‒ the leaf pile got thoroughly squashed overnight. He stays there a while longer anyway, watching wisps of cloud drift across the morning sky.

Rustling in the grass nearby makes him sit up to see Lunafreya climbing back into the stone circle, canteen in hand.

Sora stretches like a cat. “G’morning,” he yawns.

Lunafreya smiles at him, and hands him the canteen. “I found a spring aways up the hill,” she explains. “I already drank my fill, so this is for you.”

Sora thanks her and downs about a third of it, then sweeps some of the leaf detritus back into a more reasonable pile. Lunafreya sits down by the fire, already re-lit, where her two dogs lay. Sora is mildly surprised to see them again; they appear to have rejoined their master during the night.

“So what’s next?” he asks, crawling over to scritch Pryna’s ear.

Lunafreya thinks for a moment. “Ramuh, ideally,” she says at last. “Though it is unwise to leave too many Covenants open-ended at once…” She yawns widely.

Sora tilts his head. “Are you still tired?” He wouldn’t be surprised. What she pulled at the crater ‒ the Covenant thing ‒ was some of the craziest magic he’s ever seen, and he saw Donald do a Gigaflare once.

“A bit,” she confesses. She glances around. “It might be prudent to remain here for another day, actually. We’re far enough from the beaten path, have a source of water and enough food to last…”

“And you wanna nap some more,” Sora grins at her.

Lunafreya actually _sticks her tongue out at him,_ then stops, looking rather surprised at herself. Sora whoops a laugh that startles Pryna into getting up and licking his face.

After reassuring the good pupper that sudden barks of laugher are not a sign of imminent death, Sora turns back to the Oracle and says, “No but seriously, sleeping is always a great idea. But is there anything I can help with in the meantime? I remember you said something about Lestallum last night.”

“Yes,” Lunafreya says instantly. “That’s the town nearest to here. I had hoped to resupply there, but it’s such a large and populous town that I worry I may be recognized.”

A stealth mission. Cool. Or ‒ not really, as the whole point is that Lunafreya will wait here and rest up for the next Rite instead of attracting attention. And while she doesn’t look so drawn as yesterday, the Oracle still has dark circles under her eyes, contrasting heavily with her pale skin. 

“Are you really gonna be okay to do another one of those Rite thingies so soon?” he finds himself asking.

“I have to be,” Lunafreya says simply. Pryna lays her head on Luna’s knee.

And Sora ‒ understands that. Against all odds, he knows what it is to have an entire world, or perhaps just a few people who _are_ your entire world, counting on you. He understands the urge to insulate others from the pain of happenings that are not their fault, but are nevertheless unavoidable.

Titan’s angry shout ‒ and the Oracle’s reply concerning inevitability ‒ comes to the fore of Sora’s mind, and he considers once again the significance of the tomb he found.“Hey ‒ Lunafreya?” he begins, hesitantly.

“Hm?”

“What do you think it was, down in the crater, that made my keyblade react?”

She looks at him sharply. “I thought you said you didn’t find anything.”

“I said I didn’t _do_ anything. I didn’t get a chance to. But there was definitely something weird down there, something that Titan didn’t want anybody to see.”

“Then ‒ it is simply not meant to be seen.” She says this as though it is painfully obvious, but Sora isn’t sure.

“There’s ‒” He trips over his words, unable to verbally express the sense he has that something is _off_ here. “Your world is different from other worlds I’ve been to.”

“How so?”

Sora can’t describe it. He only knows that he’s been here for days and days, keyblade out and everything, and hasn’t seen a single heartless. Not in the marble cities of Tenebrae, or in the sea ports and cargo airships that carried them across the ocean, or in the wilds of Lucis. He might expect a stretch of peace somewhere densely inhabited and well-defended, but not out on the plains in the middle of nowhere. _Certainly_ not in the company of a Princess of Heart who is actively throwing her power around.

It would make sense if this world’s keyhole were already locked, but it… isn’t. Whenever he’s locked a keyhole, or travelled to a world that is already safe, there is a sense of calm in the bones of the earth, a placidity that is unstirred no matter what conflicts the world’s inhabitants might dream up. That sense is absent here. _Every_ sense of the world’s heart is absent here. Sora doesn’t know what to make of a world that constantly seems a half-step out of sync with reality.

“It’s like ‒” Sora struggles for the words. “It’s like if you walk outside, and it’s obviously daytime. But you can’t find the sun anywhere when you look up, like it’s ‒”

“Shadowed?” Lunafreya suggests, stroking Pryna’s head. “It is the starscourge you sense. Daemons. You said you’ve not seen their like anywhere else.”

Sora shakes his head emphatically. “No, not that.” He bites his lip, thinks, and tries again. “You’re outside, and it’s bright enough and everything seems like it should be normal, and at first you think it’s just a cloudy day. But you look up, and the sky is perfectly blue, and the shadows on the ground all indicate that the sun, the light casting them, should be just overhead. Only it’s not. There’s just empty sky. Bright as day, but with no sun. How can there be no sun?”

Lunafreya’s hand stills. She spends a long while digesting that. “The light _is_ fading from our star,” she says at length. “You’re right about that. But the reason for it is a long, complicated one.”

“No, I ‒ I didn’t mean to sound like you have to explain it to me,” Sora says quickly. “You don’t. I just think that this is probably definitely something that needs investigating, at some point.”

She stares at him for a moment. Not as long of a moment as before, but the expression on her face makes it feel more intense. Pryna quirks her ears back, wondering why the petting stopped. “You want to go back to the crater,” Lunafreya concludes.

Sora nods.

“Absolutely not.”

He blinks. “What? Why?”

"Whatever it is you think you found, Titan was _furious_ with you for disturbing it. I ‒” She cuts herself off, curls her hands in the fabric of her dress. “You’re disturbing a lot of things.”

Sora reels back an inch. “Is that ‒ bad?”

“I ‒ don’t know,” she replies, honestly. Pryna crawls further onto her lap, and Lunafreya wraps an arm around her. “My world is hanging by a thread, and I know what I must do.”

“But maybe I could find something that would _help_ you,” he pleads. “Maybe what I’m feeling has something to do with what’s going on now, and if I went back…”

“No, Sora.” Her voice goes harder than he’s heard it this whole time. “I know what I have to do. It is hard enough as it is. Titan was the easiest rite of the six, the others will rise in difficulty.”

“The _easiest?!_ ” He blanches. “I _felt_ what you did back there, that was ‒ You’re powerful, but that rite thing _dropped_ you. I thought you’d be better after a night’s rest but you’re _not._ And you have to do five more _worse_ things?”

“Three. The Glacian is already spoken for and ‒” She hesitates. “And the Draconian maintains a pact with a long-ago Oracle of my line.”

Sora sits back. He looks at Lunafreya ‒ sees the dark circles still under her eyes, the slouch in her spine as she curls around Pryna in her lap, the way her shoulders still labor when she breathes as though just the act of _living_ exhausts her. 

“What kind of gods would make you do something like this?”

It slips out softly. Sora isn’t even sure he said it out loud until Lunafreya begins to stare at him, face unreadable. She takes a breath, and something… shifts in her posture. She becomes unyielding. Sora knows that stubborn look, has seen it on Riku, and himself in the mirror a few times. 

He tries again. “Just… what’s it even all _for?_ ”

“To end the plague.” Lunafreya states this as though it is obvious.

“The… plague?”

“The scourge,” she amends. “The blight of darkness upon our star. It is a disease borne of evil, and to eradicate it, sacrifices must be made.”

“But what if there’s another way?” he presses.

Lunafreya presses her eyes shut, looking pained and stressed. It occurs to Sora that he might be being a dick, arguing with her while she’s still so strung out, and he leans back and averts his eyes.

She sighs, weary. “If a keybearer thinks there is another solution to this problem… then there very well may be. Or it could be nothing. _Or_ it could be something of equal importance that is entirely unrelated.”

“Then let’s just… _check?_ ” Sora offers. “You won’t have lost anything for trying.”

Lunafreya’s eyes flick between both of his, searching for something he can’t even guess at.

At last, she says: “Very well.”

Sora sits up. “Really?”

She holds up a warning finger. “Tomorrow,” she says firmly. “We _cannot_ go back into the Disc unprepared.”

“Right! Lestallum!” Sora jumps to his feet, eager. Umbra barks in protest. “I know all the tricks for travelling, so just leave the supplies to me! You stay here and rest up!”

Lunafreya smiles warmly at him, still tinged at the edges with sorrow, and Sora feels an intense protective urge to make all of her problems just go away. 

“Is, uh. Is there anything in particular you wanted?” he finds himself asking.

Pryna gives a plaintive little _yip,_ and Lunafreya chuckles. “Some dog treats, if you can manage them.”

That, at least, is a problem that Sora can easily solve.

‒‒‒

“What kind of gummi d’you think it is?” Kairi wonders.

Riku examines the object in his hands. It’s unprocessed, for certain ‒ not a neatly cut block but an oblong shard with remarkably sharp points. The shard is dark, oddly rigid, and threaded with shots of brightly glowing blue. “Firaga, maybe?” he guesses. “Or some variant of Thunder... I dunno, it’s weirdly crystalized.”

“It’s a meteor shard, kid,” says the woman who let them in here. “Elemancy’s not my thing, but I’m pretty sure it’s powered from nodes in the ground, not space junk.”

“Huh?” Riku blurts, because that is the most backwards thing he’s ever heard. “Elemental magic isn’t ‒”

“Don’t mean nothin’ by it,” the power plant worker interjects, talking over Riku’s head to speak directly to Kairi.  “I just figured you two were refugees from Insomnia, what with your fancy clothes and all. What ya need with meteor shards?”

Riku makes a face. It’s not the first time someone in this power plant, or even this town, has talked over him. More often than not, women here ignore him in favor of addressing Kairi, and it’s ‒ he doesn’t even know how to describe it other than “weird”. 

“Just trying to figure out if we can make them work for something,” Kairi says, adding, “A school project,” at the woman’s curious look.

“Lookin’ for a career at Exineris, honey?” the woman smiles at Kairi. “Can always use new minds for engineering. How can I help? Name’s Holly, by the way.”

“I was actually wondering where the meteor came from,” Riku suggests.

Holly glances back at Kairi before answering. “Accordin’ to myth it fell from the sky, thousands of years ago. I think there’s a couple sects that say the Infernian threw it down during the Astral War, but you’d have to ask a historian about that. I just work here.”

Riku considers this. Time is still wonky on this world, but thousands of years is a long time for gummi pieces to just sit around. The technology was only discovered on worlds Riku is familiar with within his own lifetime.

“Was there ever a time when the shards were… soft? Like, pliant?” Riku asks, hesitantly.

Holly looks at him like he’s grown a second head. “It’s a _meteor_ , rock ain’t never been soft.”

He sighs. “Never mind.”

“Could we maybe keep this?” Kairi asks, gesturing to the shard in Riku’s hands. “I know it’s probably against protocol, but it would really help us out.”

Holly heaves a sigh of her own. “Aw, I never could say no. Go on, then, just don’t crack it. Not unless you need a hundred-odd volts.”

“Thanks so much!” Kairi bows politely. “We’ll see ourselves out.”

Riku nods as well. “Thanks again for showing us around, ma’am.”

“Good luck on your project, kids. And Kairi, take good care of that boy of yours!”

‒

“Think it’ll work?” Kairi asks, examining the shard in her own turn.

They’re gradually making their way out the way they came, although there’s still a lot to see. It’s hard to get lost in Exineris, as it’s largely concentric rings of catwalks, hallways, and workrooms surrounding the core. Paradoxically, the simple layout just seems to embolden them to take the long way and explore a bit more.

“Yeah, I do,” Riku replies. He’s still not sure if alterations to their gummiphones is a great idea, but by now he’s curious enough about whether they _can_ to put aside any doubts as to whether they _should._ “It’s still a gummi piece, no matter how ridiculously old it is. And it’s a part of this place’s original worldwall, so it should give the signal a lot more precision while we’re here.”

“According to Ienzo, anyway,” Kairi huffs. “I thought you said the walls between worlds only fell, like, a couple decades ago. If this thing was part of this world’s wall, how is it old enough to be ‒” She flicks it with a fingernail, producing a light _ting_ sound. “‒ petrified?”

“Dunno. Magic is weird here.” A thought occurs to him, and he turns toward Kairi. “Hey, you trained under Merlin. What’d you make of what Holly said about elemental magic?”

She shrugs. “I mean, magic in general can build up in the ground and settle into rivers and pools. But it’s always just generic magical energy. What makes a spell elementally aligned has to do with the caster, not where you get the power from.”

“That’s what I thought too…” Riku muses. "Not that I could get a word in edgewise, half the time."

Kairi glances at him. "Meaning?"

"Nothing important," Riku admits with a shrug. "She just. Kept ignoring me and talking to you instead. It was weird."

"Probably because it’s usually the other way around,” Kairi remarks.

Riku pauses. Then he thinks about that. It feels like it came a little out of nowhere. “I mean...” he starts, uncertain. “You’re unfamiliar with a lot of this, and I’m not. And when we’re out in new places you usually let me take the lead. People notice that, when they talk to someone.”

But Riku knows immediately after he says it that that's wrong. Kairi was _with_ Sora the entire time, for months after Riku - after their Islands were destroyed, up until Sora released her heart from his body. She saw every sight, learned every lesson, even kept some of his muscle memory afterward if her basic combat stance is any indication. Kairi understands plenty, she’s just not as loud as Sora or as assertive as Riku.

“No,” Kairi sighs. “The King and Master Yen-Sid do it too. Even when it’s a question or statement _about_ me, more than half the time it’s directed at you or Sora, or even Lea. It’s annoying.”

“I’m ‒ sorry,” Riku says, not knowing what else to say. “I hadn’t noticed before.”

Kairi shrugs. “You wouldn’t,” she says, and it’s not accusatory, just a neutral statement of fact. Riku doesn’t really know what to do with that.

“Either way…" he says eventually. "Wanna put it together and see if it works?” 

“Yeah! Umm…” Kairi glances around, then stops at a partially open door. “Let’s just duck in here.”

‒‒‒

Lunafreya is bent over Umbra’s little red notebook, chewing absently on a pen, when Sora leaves the haven. That can only be a good thing, he thinks. The Princess seems so lonely all the time, but she can’t even walk into a town for fear of being seen.

The walk is a relatively long one. By the time Sora makes it to the canyon Lunafreya warned him about, the sun is already high overhead. Lestallum is just across, though at this angle it’s hard to tell that it’s more than a few rooms jutting from the side of the far cliff face. Only the smoke in the sky overhead tells a different story.

Sora leans over the edge, looks down into the canyon below, and tries to remember what it felt like to glide on air and magic. It would make this trip a lot faster, and potentially be _way_ useful down the line.

 _Just believe, and you can do it._  

Easy to say when he was fourteen, although he can’t imagine what could possibly be different between then and now.

He catches a ride with a pickup truck instead. When they get to the bridge, Sora stands up just behind the cab, feeling the wind prick his eyes, and tries his hardest to imagine there’s nothing at all beneath his feet.

‒

After passing through a tunnel that reminds him a lot of a warp-hole in slow motion, Sora greets the delightful sight of the town of Lestallum. There’s no sea breeze, but the palms and cordylines remind him comfortingly of home, and people wave or say hello more often than not. It’s nice.

It doesn’t take him long to get _lost_ in the twists and turns of the city, and Sora has a near-overwhelming urge to shred down the railings of some of the staircases here ‒ it’s been _forever_ since he broke out a skateboard. There doesn’t seem to be one lying around for him to “borrow”, unfortunately. Maybe later though. Still plenty to do. 

He kicks through piles of trash left against alley walls and picks up anything shiny he sees. Sometimes it’s just an old soda can, half-rusted. Sometimes it’s a few coins of local currency, which, useful for the time being. Hey, money is money, and if he ends up leaving before he spends it, it’ll at least be useful for the raw material it’s made out of. Maybe the moogles can do something with it. 

There’s a large dumpster not far ahead of him, and when he gets to it he tosses the lid open. A quick sniff test tells him it’s not a food dumpster ‒ he fell into one of those _once,_ and only once ‒ and so he takes a small jump and shoves his upper half over the lip to start sifting through it. Cardboard, cardboard, plastic wrap… empty paper box, useless scrap metal, bits of cut-up leather… jackpot! The crystal shards glint up at him from the bottom of the dumpster and he has to wiggle and stretch to be able to reach them. He gets a static shock when his fingers brush them, so probably lightning shards. Good enough for him! He keeps combing the dumpster, but the shards seem to be the only things of value in there. Not too bad, honestly. 

The coins aren’t actually worth much in terms of the local currency, when he hits up the local convenience store across the road. Sora’s got a bit of munny on him, though not a lot ‒ gold is heavy! But it’s enough to trade for a small inflatable mat that _juuust_ about fits in his pocket when squished all the way down. 

Back into the city proper, he can hear the sound of music bouncing against the walls. Sora grins and picks up his pace, jogging out into a roundabout full of people and lovely sound. It’s a full band performing, and there’s enough space that it only takes him a moment to jump into the area in the front and start dancing with the crowd. He grins at the first person he clasps hands with, a guy probably not much older than him in leathers and rugged clothing. A second of hesitation is all it takes for the other man to smile back and dance with him.

He throws himself from person to person until the whole crowd is cheering and jumping with the music, and then he rolls into the open space between the band and the crowd, breakdancing to the lively beat.

He stops as the song does, and some of the money thrown towards the musicians is for him, too. He gladly picks it up, bowing gratefully and smiling hard enough for his cheeks to hurt. Probably not enough for a tent or anything, but it’s a start. And it doesn’t look like rain will hit any time soon anyway, so he’s got some wiggle room there.

A hop, skip, and a jump has him going yet _another_ direction, down a wide but densely crowded alleyway full of market stalls. Pungent smells and exotic spices hit him like a punch to the nose. 

“Comin’ through!” calls a man’s voice behind him, a burly blond guy carrying a huge box that obstructs his vision.

People sidestep the delivery man easily, but Sora bumps into the kebab stand before he can get out of the way in time. There’s a foil-wrapped skewer in his hand, and then immediately his pocket as he stands up and apologizes. The clerk waves him off, bright and chipper and almost bouncing in place. Sora shrugs and continues on.

While investigating an outdoor restaurant of some kind, a hyper, street-dirty dog runs up to him, hopping on his knees long enough to bark at him, and then run away. 

“H-hey! Wait up!” He calls, hand reaching out, and before he knows it, his legs are running after the dog without any conscious message from his brain.

...He has a real problem about chasing things, doesn’t he? 

It does remind him of the dog treats he promised Lunafreya though, so he keeps the stray’s scruffy tail in his sight as he follows it up the wide, litter-strewn stairs. He nevertheless manages to lose it at the top, and thinks it must have gotten lost in the scaffolding and crates back here. There’s also a bunch of containers and signs labeled _Exineris,_ including one just above a broad walkway out to the center of… huh. Another crater.

Sora supposes that makes sense, though, to have a number of smaller meteors break off the main one that Titan caught, complete with separate impact points. And it definitely is the same meteor, blue-hot flames licking up the sides and everything.

Speaking of heat, that kebab is probably getting cold. Sora unwraps the skewer and snacks on it as he looks around, idly wondering if he should save a few bites for Pryna and Umbra if he can’t find a pet store anywhere. He considers checking out the big building situated on top of the meteor piece, but it’s pretty unlikely he’ll find much in the way of supplies there. It’s probably a factory or something, so anything he took would definitely be missed.

With a sigh, and thinking vaguely that he’ll probably head back to that market from earlier, Sora turns, makes to run off again ‒ and runs right into someone, toppling them both completely over. His snack goes flying out of his hand.

“Crap! Sorrysorrysorry!” he apologizes, hastily helping to pick up whatever the other has dropped ‒ a few bolts of fabric and what looks like a sewing kit. 

“Aaand what’d I tell ya?” says another voice, gruff and amused. “Like you’re a toddler all over again.”

The person Sora ran into ‒ a girl ‒ huffs as she scrambles back up. “ _He’s_ the one who wasn’t looking where he was going! I am the victimized party in this situation. Gladdy, beat him up for me?”

“Beat him up yourself. He looks scrawny enough for you to take.”

“Hey!” Sora protests, finally looking up at who he has quite literally run into. But what he sees makes very little sense, and for a moment can’t believe his eyes. “K-Kairi?” he blurts, before realizing that, though the face is very similar, it’s not _quite_ her. Her hair is brown, and curls slightly on the ends, her chin is a bit squarer, and her eyes are quick and dark.

“Oh, come on, that’s the second ‒ wait.” The girl pauses mid-pout and stares at him for a moment. “You wouldn’t happened to be named _Sora,_ would you?”

“That’s me,” Sora answers without thinking. He’s glancing around for the skewer he dropped, and eventually sees it being snatched up by the same stray dog that jumped on him in the market, who ducks behind a fence with his prize. He smiles.

“...Holy crap,” she says, looking stunned. “Holy _crap._ Gladdy, this is the guy!”

“Seriously?” says the other one, who Sora just now takes in as the actual hugest human being he’s ever met in his life, with brown hair and eyes like the girl and a thin scar nearly bisecting his face. He's also wearing an open jacket over _no shirt,_ which… Wow. Okay. Biceps for miles and abs for _days._ Even Riku isn't this shredded.

The girl continues to gape like Sora is _anything_ worth looking at. “Oh _wow,_ I can’t believe they were out all night and _I’m_ the one who found you _by accident._ ”

Sora understands maybe half of that. “They who?”

“Riku and Kairi!” the girl exclaims. “They’re here looking for you!”

“They’re _here?!_ ” His train of thought comes to a screeching halt as this information is added to his brain. _They’re here._ They came after him. There’s a part of him that wants to break into tears. It’s been him chasing after _them_ for so long… his eyes locked on Riku’s back as he got further and further away, running after Kairi because while she can definitely handle herself he still doesn’t want her hurt. He’s always chasing after someone.

His heart feels fit to burst. They came after him.

“They’re here...” he repeats as something else occurs to him. “I wasn’t gone _that_ long!”

“Take it up with your girlfriend,” she drawls, and Sora can feel the tips of his ears go red. “You should come to the Leville with us. I don’t have their numbers yet, but Riku and Kairi will eventually pop up there.”

Sora excitedly falls into step with them. “Isn’t that the big building by the fountain?”

“Yup!” she chirps. “I’m Iris, by the way, and the big lunk behind me is my big brother, Gladio.”

“Emphasis on ‘big,’” Sora mutters, still blushing.

"Yeah, and don't think I didn't catch you staring." Gladio grins back. “Nice ta meetcha, kid.” He hums, and then reaches down to ruffle Sora’s hair with a giant paw of a hand. “I hear I owe your friends a pretty big debt.”

“Really?” Okay, now he’s curious. It seems he’s not the only one who’s gotten themselves knee deep in this world’s affairs. Par for the course. “What happened?”

A lot of the brightness falls out of Gladio’s eyes, but he shrugs it off before Sora can apologize for anything. “Iris was at the Fall of Insomnia,” he says, nodding in his sister’s direction. 

Sora’s not sure if he’s supposed to know what that means, aside from some half-remembered overheard conversations aboard Commodore Highwind’s airship, so he just nods along.

“Kairi did this wicked shield spell right in front of me,” Iris enthuses, turning to hop backwards as she talks. “And there was this MT Shock Trooper coming after us, right? I was helping Jared so I couldn’t kick it in the face like I wanted, but Kairi jumped like three feet in the air and did some kind of spinning… I dunno what! But her sword-looking thing came around and sent the trooper’s head flying right off its shoulders!”

Sora’s grinning uncontrollably by the time Iris is done gushing. “No one ever expects the little girl in pink to hit that hard with a bunch of flowers,” he remarks.

“ _Right?_ ”

“You two are headed the wrong way,” Gladio remarks.

Wait, what? “Huh?” Sora blurts, at the exact same time as Iris starts and looks around. While they were chattering, they missed the right turn to the main road, and were instead wandering down some back alley without even seeing it.

Gladio bursts out laughing. “Okay, I can see now how they lost track of you,” he says, shoulders still shaking as he grins. “You and Iris both’ll wander after whatever distraction passes by. No wonder you got lost.”

Now that's just not fair. “I am _not_ lost!" Sora protests. "I just got caught up in some stuff!”

“Caught up sleeping in the woods, looks like,” Gladio jibes.

“Yeah, Sora,” says Iris. “You’ve still got some leaf bits or something in your hair.”

Sora brushes at his head, finds what they’re talking about. “Oh, no,” he says. “That’s not from last night, it’s from the dumpster.” They both give him odd looks, so Sora smiles brightly back. “You’d be surprised at what useful stuff people throw away!”

“Right…” Gladio says tightly. “So uh. Where _did_ you sleep last night, kid?”

Sora trips down yet another set of stairs (the correct ones this time), hands clasped behind his head. “Some haven aways east,” he says. “I came to town cuz I was looking for camping supplies, but most stuff is too bulky to have to carry all the time. I did find this though.” He pries the inflatable mat out of one of his pouches and shows it to Gladio.

Gladio inspects it, turning it around in his big hands until he finds a brand name printed somewhere. “Yeah, this ain’t half-bad for the price,” he comments. “If you’re in the market for a small tent, try one of those wire-frame ones you can fold down into a little circle. Won’t keep the rain off if it’s comin’ down hard, but a tarp isn’t much extra bulk to carry if you fold it right.”

“I was actually hoping for better bedding, but anything squishy enough is way too big.”

“You oughta know firm ground’s much better for your back,” Gladio says, clapping him on the shoulder.

Sora staggers under it, shoves him off with a half-smirk. “Not for Luna’s,” he mutters. “She was a mess when we woke up this morning and I don’t think she can take another night of that.”

Both Gladio and Iris zero in on him with gazes like a Sniper Nobody about to hit him in the face and his keyblade is on the _other side of the room_ from a strike raid. Gladio even starts to loom a little bit. 

“Luna?” Iris tilts her head curiously at the same time as Gladio’s eyebrows go up into his hairline. 

“Lady… Lunafreya?” Gladio asks, in a strangled voice.

“Um, no?” He squeaks out. A voice in his head that sounds a _lot_ like Riku sighs and mutters about how he can’t lie to save his life, or anyone else’s. 

“Wait a minute _wait a minute!_ ” Iris gestures excitedly, stepping around him. Sora suddenly feels very cornered. “Sir Altius said ‒ _you_ were the one she left with the Oracle!”

“Wait, you know Crowe?” His shoulders slump with relief. His big mouth hasn’t gotten him in trouble. _Again._

“ _‘Crowe?’_ ” Gladio blinks in surprise. “Man you must have left one hell of an impression to be usin’ her first name. But you _know_ ‒” His voice drops closer to a whisper. They’re still in a pretty public space. “You know where the Oracle is.”

“Uh, yeah?”

“Ohmygods you need to tell us,” Iris gushes. 

Sora purses his lips. “I can’t.”

Gladio makes a noise very similar to Riku that means his brain is breaking, just a bit. “The hell do you mean, you can’t? Do you know where she is or not?”

“I do! But…” He huffs. “Okay look, I _promised_ I wouldn’t tell anyone where she is. Do you know how hard it is to get her to do anything?” He complains, just a little. “I had to badger her into staying _put_ so she could rest and I could get supplies.” He throws up his hands in frustration. “She just wants to keep on doing crazy covenant magic even when just waking up the grumpy-butt Titan made her so tired and sick, and I _tried_ to help her get a good night’s sleep but it didn’t help, she’s still surly and on edge and ‒ _aargh!_ ”

Gladio _twitches._ “Can you. Just. Come with us _please._ ”

Sora hesitates. “I don’t ‒”

“Just to the Leville,” Iris insists. “Your friends will meet us there eventually, remember?” 

He sighs. What has he gotten himself into _now?_ “...Yeah, alright.”

‒

Their walk to the Leville after this is silent and fast-paced, the siblings putting their long legs to use and almost outpacing him. He huffs, feeling the burn just a little bit. He should not be _this_ out of shape, but he did do a _lot_ of running yesterday. And today. He should probably eat more, but his stomach’s kind of in a roil. Gladio pulls out what Sora only recently recognizes as a _phone_ and talks to someone in low tones while they walk. 

The entrance into the Leville is lovingly air-conditioned, and Sora shivers a little even as he welcomes the lack of heat and humidity ‒ Destiny Islands is _not_ this humid, thank you very much. He’s directed to a private corner where they’re joined by the most primly-dressed man Sora’s ever seen. _Control_ , is the first thing that comes to Sora’s mind about him. Mostly with himself. There’s a pinch to the corners of his green eyes, behind thin glasses, that speaks to a large amount of stress and how he’s _absolutely_ got to have a handle on everything. Sora suspects that maybe he doesn’t.

The man looks Sora up and down with a critical eye. “This is the one?” he asks, addressing Gladio.

“Hard to believe, right?”

The man steps even with Gladio, speaking softly. “I am not certain it’s wise to ‒”

“If we had another lead, I’d take it,” Gladio says with a shrug. “But we don’t.”

On an impulse, Sora holds his hand out for the man to shake. “I’m Sora!” he says, beaming brightly.

Green eyes blink, shadowed by something Sora can’t place, but at last the man’s mouth quirks up at the corners, and accepts the proffered hand. “Ignis Scientia,” he says, warmly. Then he takes a step back, straightens the cuffs of his button-down shirt, and gestures to the opulent-looking staircase toward the back of the lobby. “If you’ll come this way.”

Ignis keeps a firm hand on Sora’s shoulder as he leads him up the carpeted stairs, with Iris and Gladio close behind. 

There's an _itch_ in Sora's mind now, growing as they navigate the narrow halls. He finds himself walking faster, the others lengthening stride to keep pace. Ignis doesn’t need to pull him to a stop in front of a particular door. Sora reaches out to open the door on his own, but stops himself. The wood grain of the door looks like migrating clouds, and there’s an inlay around the peephole in the shape of a star.

Ignis takes out a key and lets them all inside. It’s dim inside, with the lamp off and the shades drawn, though sunlight filters through the heavy fabric in fits and starts. In a chair next to one of the beds, legs pulled up under him and fiddling with a camera, is a freckled blond boy closer to Ignis’s age than Sora’s. The bed itself is occupied by a lithe figure in black, resting fitfully under thin sheets, expression tight behind his closed eyes.

The blond uncurls from the chair but doesn’t stand up, and eyes the group of them as they enter. “Back so soon, Iggy?” he says, a joking lilt to his voice. “I thought you were gonna go interrogate the kid.”

Ignis clears his throat and straightens. “I believe I said _persuade,_ and I should hope the facts are persuasion enough.”

“You’re just a big softie for little kids and you know it,” Gladio laughs.

Iris stamps a foot, the sound muffled on the carpeted floor. “He’s not _little,_ ” she complains. “He’s _my_ age.”

“Yeah, and therefore little.”

“Shut it!”

Sora’s eyes haven’t left the figure on the bed. Yen Sid said that Sora has the power to connect to any heart he likes, and he _recognizes_ a heart he’s touched before. But for the life of him he can’t remember when.

_(a heart traversed, a world reached ‒)_

The one on the bed comes awake with a gasp.

Ignis is at his side in an instant. “Bad dream?”

The other grimaces and shakes his head. “Just ‒ falling,” he mutters. “And fighting, and falling again.”

Ignis sighs sympathetically. “To be expected, after the time you’ve had.”

“No, it’s just that ‒ Pryna was there, and I think she…” he pauses, catches sight of Sora, who swallows reflexively. Meeting his gaze is electrifying, like passing through the Door to Light and crashing like a meteor into the oceans of _home._ “I know you,” he says, slowly.

_(Then you’re like him! The same sky!)_

“Y-yeah…” Sora replies. “I think I dreamed of you.”

“I was dreaming of Luna,” says the other ‒ softly, like he’s still hazy from sleep. “Or ‒ it was Pryna that was there, but I think it was really Luna. I saw her get hurt, or maybe… she was lying so still when the floor gave out, I couldn’t…”

Sora’s not entirely sure he’s awake himself; everything seems so disconnected right now. “How do you know Lunafreya?”

The other’s gaze snaps up, then, fully awake all at once. His mouth works for a moment, unsure how to respond. “We were friends as kids,” he finally decides on. “We write letters to each other.”

“Then… that means you’re Noctis,” Sora confirms.

Noctis nods.

There’s nothing world-shaking about this information ‒ just the opposite in fact. It slides into place like the centermost piece of a jigsaw puzzle, or a plot twist you didn’t know you were anticipating but are nevertheless pleasantly, satisfyingly unsurprised by. That faint sense of unreality fades away, and the world folds back down around them.

Ignis steps toward Sora, leans down to speak at his shoulder. 

“I am grateful for your protection of Lady Lunafreya, and I appreciate your reluctance to tell us where she is,” he says, just loud enough for his words to reach Sora’s ears. “But we _need_ to find her, both to make sure she’s safe and to keep Noctis safe.”

_(If I look for your friend, will you help mine?)_

He made Carbuncle a promise.

“Y-yeah,” Sora finds himself saying. “Okay, let’s go.”

‒

It’s all Sora can do to bring himself to leave the place where Kairi and Riku were promised to be, but. This is important. Important in a way that he can feel all the way through his heart and down deep in his bones. _This,_ right here, is what Carbuncle asked of him.

Iris stays behind, promising to tell Kairi and Riku where Sora went as soon as they get back. Sora follows Noctis, Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio to a sleek black car in the overlook’s parking lot, and squeezes into the back seat between Noctis and Gladio. Sora keeps glancing at Noct, halfway listening for a squeaky mental voice and halfway not caring if he does. He doesn’t need Carbuncle to confirm what his heart already knows, although someone putting the feeling into _actual words_ might be nice.

Little is said on the road, aside from Sora pointing directions and recounting the way he came. Gladio had explained that not all havens are marked on maps, though they’ve been adding the locations of whatever out-of-the-way havens they happen to discover. Sora wonders how long the four of them have been out here, searching for their Princess.

He wonders if Lunafreya knows that her friends, and not just her enemies, are looking for her so desperately.

At his word, the Ignis pulls the car to the side of the road near to a big red barrier Sora remembers seeing. On the other side of the road of the road is an uphill climb, shallow enough, but full of loose rocks.

Sora knows without saying that Noctis wouldn’t do well if he tried to traverse it, even with the aid of the forearm crutches he produced from what Axel called hammerspace and what Noct calls his armiger.

He watches uncertainly as Noctis makes the attempt anyway. “I can ‒ D’you want me to, um,” he starts.

Ignis takes over. “Sora and I will make our way to the haven,” he says firmly. “Noct, please stay here with Gladio.”

Noctis is so tense with anticipation that he looks like he might vibrate out of his skin. Prompto slings an arm around his shoulders.

“C’mon, you owe me a rematch at PvP, and I’m _preeeetty_ sure you’ve only been sleeping all day to avoid gettin’ your butt whooped.”

Noctis sighs, nods, and Sora feels like he can breathe again as well.

The climb isn’t long, with only the two of them. They follow the faint beacon of misty air for maybe twenty minutes before the rock plinth is in sight, glowing faintly in the afternoon sun. 

Umbra sits just off-center, next to the empty fire pit. 

“Hey there, boy!” Sora calls, and the Messenger dog obligingly runs toward them, jumping up on Sora’s legs and sniffing intently at the pocket that contained a meat skewer an hour ago. Sora laughs and rubs at Umbra’s face. “Sorry, I forgot to get treats, but I think I found something better. Where’s your human, huh?”

Umbra barks, then sits, presenting the open flap of his messenger bag to Sora. 

Ignis steps forward to join them. “Did Lady Lunafreya mention any errands of her own?”

“No,” says Sora, frowning. “She’s supposed to be resting…”

Umbra yaps again, impatient, but Lunafreya was so protective of the contents of Umbra’s bag that for a long moment Sora is loathe to open it.

Ignis does it instead, and retrieves the familiar red notebook, and a neatly folded piece of paper. He opens and smooths out the latter, eyes scanning what’s written on it with an increasingly slack expression, before passing it to Sora.

Sora takes it, trying hard to ignore the hard pit in his stomach.

 _Dear Sora,_ it begins. 

_I am so sorry._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hobo!Sora. So much. He makes his first appearance here. -Isis
> 
> DELETED SCENE:  
>  _There’s a large dumpster ahead of him, and when he gets to it… he gives it a few hard whacks with his keyblade. It doesn’t damage anything, but the lid bounces ineffectually with each hit, and eventually an item of value pops right out. A lightning shard, this time._
> 
> _“Score,” says Sora._

**Author's Note:**

> We know crossovers aren't cool  
> But thank you in advance  
> For making an exception to the rule  
> And giving us a chance :)


End file.
